Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives, edited by John A. Murley and John E. Alvis; foreword by William F. Buckley, Jr., 2002. Willmoore Kendall (1909-1967) remains one of the most important figures in mid-twentieth century conservatism. His penetrating scholarship on Locke, his writings on the internal tensions inherent in majority rule, his early involvement with [...]
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But what is “best” for some is “worst” for others, and vice-versa. Monday, President Obama was sworn in for his second term. This event was a “best” for his stalwart supporters, such as Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and is a sign of a [...]
“Imagination rules the world,” Russell Kirk used to say.[1] He meant that imagination is a force that molds the clay of our sentiments and understanding.[2] It is not chiefly through calculations, formulas, and syllogisms, but by means of images, myths, and stories that we comprehend our relation to God, to nature, to others, and to the self. [...]
A review of Lord Percy of Newcastle’s, The Heresy of Democracy: A Study in the History of Government (London, 1954). In 1957, Kirk published a list of “must-read” books to understand modern (meaning, as it had developed or been rediscovered in the 1950s) conservatism. His list would not surprise most readers of The Imaginative Conservative, [...]
The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Catechism: A Faithful, Fun-Loving Look at Catholic Dogmas, Doctrines, and Schmoctrines by John Zmirak Q: Why call this thing “Bad Catholic”? A: Because if you take your faith seriously, you’re bound to be dissatisfied with how well you’re living it. The kind of people who insist they’re “good Catholics” invariably [...]
Not Chesterbelloc, but Bur-Kirk. [Dedicated to the genius and patience of Winston Elliott] In the fall of 1950, Russell Kirk turned the ripe old age of 32. He had been publishing articles and reviews (and soon his M.A. thesis on John Randolph of Roanoke through the University of Chicago) since 1936. Even during [...]
Ultimately in Russell Kirk’s thinking one is confronted with the fundamental differences between the pridefulness of secularism and the transcendent, enduring, and sacrificial love of the biblical view. This accounts for his powerful dissent on any proposition that conservatism and libertarianism are theoretically compatible. Born on October 19, 1918, in Plymouth, Michigan, the son of [...]
Because of its sober and realistic assumptions about human nature and the human condition, the American republic of the Constitution of 1789 is not designed to do the big things typical of empires. It is especially not designed to do that which has most characterized empire: conquer. When America does pursue empire, it undermines the [...]
Democracy and Leadership by Irving Babbitt. Foreword by Russell Kirk, Liberty Classics, 1979, 390 pp. The appearance of a new edition of Irving Babbitt’s Democracy and Leadership (first published in 1924) is one sign among many that interest in this controversial thinker is growing markedly. Several scholarly studies related to his work have been published [...]
The phrase “compassionate conservatism” is of recent origin. While any number of politicians have laid claim to it, one thing is certain: it was born of the worry that being labeled a “conservative,” simply, would cause you to be portrayed as lacking in basic human feelings, particularly for the plight of the poor. Thus “compassionate [...]
The “higher education system” in the United States has metastasized to the point that the body politic will soon be unable to sustain it. Tuition and fees have grown at more than three times the cost of living in the last two decades, outstripping even the rise in the cost of medical care. These enormous [...]
So I don’t want to give the impression that heresies are all bad. They’re usually partly good: They highlight part of the truth that had been obscured or neglected. They’re rebellions that have a Christian point. Consider this partial affirmation of the heretical modern—or Lockean, nominalist–world by a very traditionalist and very erudite Catholic—Thaddeus Kozinski: [...]
The New Jacobinism: America as Revolutionary State (2d expanded ed.) by Claes G. Ryn. National Humanities Institute, 2011. Near the end of his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke praised what he called the “combining mind” as indispensable to the sort of constitutional government Britain had inherited and France was busy squandering. Erecting any sort [...]
The whole case for our commitment to equality as a national goal comes from an isolated phrase—”all men are created equal”—in the Declaration of Independence. Was Lincoln right in his exposition of this phrase in the Gettysburg Address? The idea is as old, of course, as that magical first sentence of the Gettysburg Address: “Fourscore [...]