If it’s time to “defund” the police department of Minneapolis, maybe it’s also time to “defund” the K-12 sector of what passes for public education in Minnesota. The idea is to fund parents instead. The radical idea of school choice will directly empower parents, which is something that defunding the police will not do. In [...]
Banishing memory and the party of memory is nothing short of the banishment of the love and joy which make our lives and memories worth cherishing and conserving. The conservative celebrates the present order precisely because it is imbued with the traces of Eden which vivify our memories—and, therefore, our true selves—and unite us in [...]
Political philosophers have always understood that there was a close relationship between conceptions of time and politics. Modern, and now postmodern politics, are no different. Patrick Deneen has recently argued that modern ideologies are defined first and foremost by their relationship to time. Introduction “The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, / That [...]
We are called to be contemplatives in the world, not of it or above it. Since our true life is not here where political parties constantly vie for our affection, we can let go of all this nonsense and focus on neighbor love. That doesn’t mean not voting or not dealing with the massive political [...]
Pericles was proud of Athenian freedom and insisted it was worth dying for. Our ancestors shared that pride and that insistence. But they and he were proud, not of the absence of discipline or authority, but of the fact that in a society of free citizens discipline and authority are self-imposed. The other day an [...]
The question—is liberalism a self-defeating enterprise?—has gained traction over the last couple of years. Even as far back as 1921, the Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana dedicated time to this topic in the form of an essay he titled “The Irony of Liberalism.” In this brief work, Santayana explored prevalent themes that emerged throughout liberalism’s early [...]
Many Americans agree that something hasn’t smelled right about this pandemic from the beginning, something in the air that smacks of calculated panic and political engineering. The coronavirus will pass, God willing, but perhaps in its place will come another disease—the relentless leftwing virus. Donald J. Trump has been criticized and condemned for calling COVID-19 [...]
We conservatives need to begin approaching ideas rather than labels. Where we rightfully oppose Marxism for adopting a soullessly ideological worldview, we should be careful to note that Liberalism, though as dangerous as any other ideology when adopted with fanaticism, is also too close to home for us to dismiss in the same way. It [...]
While the conservative must access a whole library of great books to make his case for the Western tradition, the leftist can just recite mantras in his call for a clean-slate utopia. In musical terms, the conservative must compose a great opera while the leftist responds with a pop song. So how do we conservatives [...]
The great question that perplexed progressives throughout much of the 21st century was how to completely untether us from the past, thereby for the first time in history truly liberating ourselves from our moorings and ushering in a new age of gender freedom, radical equality, and ethnic equity. The Crime His fingers twitched, but they [...]
Socialism’s nuances and ideological subtleties can be latent, unknown, and often unrecognizable. To truly grasp the depth of the socialists’ arguments, we must first look at socialism’s ideological origins—specifically, Jean Rousseau’s invalidation of Original Sin. As socialism ascends in prominence, many of its proponents are open and outspoken with their socialist political positions. These socialist [...]
The contemporary frequency of parents, especially mothers, killing their children—not only newborn babies but toddlers too—is a new phenomenon. Does this have something to do with the relentless loosening of abortion laws in America since Roe v. Wade? We live in an era where we pretend that we do not know when life begins, but [...]
My progressive friends assure me that they are looking out for children, minorities, and especially minority children. The problem with this conceit is that when it comes to closing the achievement gap between Latino and white children on the one hand, and black and white children on the other, the only progressive cities are conservative. [...]
Many of America’s founders defended religious liberty, believing it grounded on the duty men and women have to worship their Creator. As late as the 1990s, Democrats and Republicans were able to work together to protect that liberty, but unfortunately, the political left has begun to abandon religious freedom. As the 2020 presidential campaign heats [...]