The rich soil of faith, family, and friends is where community is formed, where relationships flourish, where roots go down that nourish us. This is where those of us who are rooted in Christ seek to walk out our faith in tangible deeds of sacrifice, loyalty and love, in relationship with people whose names we [...]
At the moment, the Left seems to pose an existential threat to the republic. As a movement, it is composed of totalitarian ideologues who care only about power, not morality or love. They will implement the most inhumane policies imaginable. We must all be on highest alert. During my sixteen years writing for The Imaginative [...]
The last three centuries have proven that imposing an ideological vision upon any civilization is cataclysmic. So we must conclude—annoyingly—that no formula can resurrect a Christian culture, but only a Christian response to the concrete needs of real people. Part One: The Rule of Necessity and the Rule of Love Most diagnoses of our current [...]
The trouble with liberalism is the trouble with all heresies—it has no idea that it is a heresy. It believes that it developed sui generis, without parents, as a sudden insight of an enlightened mind which finally decided to be rational, see all men as equal, abhor slavery, recognize democracy as the ideal form of [...]
In what kind of world is it fair that the United States should shoulder the burden of protecting totally wealthy societies from a corrupt and violent world? Though it would be hard to pin a tail on Trump’s ever-moving and erratic donkey of a myriad of statements on every topic imaginable, it’s pretty clear that [...]
Niccolo Machiavelli may help modern man to think more clearly about power and prudence, and to remember that the world is a dangerous place where all is not as it seems. An argument can be made that Niccolo Machiavelli’s sinister reputation is unjust. This is not to gloss over the very deep flaws in the [...]
Ideology is not only lazy, it is, at heart, criminal. There never was an ideology that allowed for the fullness of man. Always, ideology denigrates the truth and the dignity of the human person. One of the most dangerous things to come out of the French Revolution was the notion and norm of an ideology. [...]
Whatever his failings as an imaginative thinker, President James Monroe’s own convictions were rooted deeply in the spirit and the letter of the U.S. Constitution. As he entered the White House in March 1817, he had little (well, less) use for James Madison’s newfound love of nationalism. While he entered the presidency too late to [...]
As a theory of history, progressivism always believes in conflict and violence and antagonism. Progressivism, then, not surprisingly, is wrapped up in bigotry, racism, and violence. “Progress! Did you ever reflect that that word is almost a new one?” asked an enraptured Woodrow Wilson in 1913. “No words come more often or more naturally to [...]
At the heart of Alexis de Tocqueville’s thought lies the “restless mind”—a mind that sees the essence of humanity in the realization that each of us “dies alone” and that life is but a fleeting moment hedged in between the abysses of the pre-born and the dead. The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the [...]
The determined move to abolish the hereditary lords is part of a process of self-destruction. The lords are part of the mythical bulwark that sustains England. When the current session of the British Parliament ends this spring, the nation will abruptly bring to a close a 700-year institution. On March 10, the House of Commons [...]
It took Edmund Burke a very little time to decide that French Revolutionary philosophy posed a massive threat to civilization and social stability throughout Europe. By the end of his life, eight years after the storming of the Bastille, his fears of Jacobin contagion had led him to ask for a secret grave, removed from [...]
As I looked around that room in Washington, filled with so many powerful people, I realized that one day in Mother Teresa’s life brought more good to the face of the earth than all our efforts combined for a lifetime. It was utterly ludicrous, stepping out of a chauffeured White House limousine to go hear [...]
The king’s task is to weave the two kinds together, bringing out the good qualities in their opposite temperaments, so that virtues of both courage and moderation may be found together in each individual soul and in the city. Interrogated by the governor for political treason, the lowly Nazarene simply responds, “My kingship is not [...]