Going back to the first principles of the Founding, one finds that the Founders talked unceasingly about rights. Rights language became a critical part of the cultural landscape when James Otis delivered his oration on the nature of rights, the common law, and the natural law. Feel free to call me a conservative (I won’t [...]
A liberal education is free in the sense that it is free of practical goals. We study our language and our literature or biology and chemistry and psychology just because it is a human instinct to do so, and because it is enjoyable to do so. Everything is Political Just as I began my college [...]
No episode in the American past is more susceptible to such manipulation—manipulation rather than debate—than the Civil War. On the historical question permit me to be blunt and unequivocal. There can be no doubt that slavery was central to all that divided the northern and the southern states, and that slavery was ultimately responsible for [...]
Edgar Allan Poe vigorously denounced the Jeffersonian ideal of democracy. He had no sympathy with abstract political notions such as those which had produced liberal republican theory in America and elsewhere. Like Edmund Burke, Poe was highly suspicious of the “well-constructed Republic.” The opinion has been often stated that Edgar Allan Poe was bizarre and [...]
Though a self-described "man of the left," Christopher Lasch was once and always a populist. By the end of his life, he was concerned with the rise to power of American elites who, as of the mid-1990s, were already alien to—and divorced from—the masses of ordinary American citizens. The Revolt of the Elites and the [...]
All social entities or movements need dreams, which can be defined as an indispensable capacity to envision a future for themselves that considers both the practical means at hand and a higher ideal. Societies that do not dream are doomed to die. The left faces a new challenge that is leaving its activists troubled. Over [...]
Recent elections in Holland, Sweden, Italy and Argentina have given victories to a new type of conservative leader based on a faulty premise. Some Christians hold that the only way to fight against godless and immoral times is with godless leaders who practice no established religion and follow no set rules. Only these outside mavericks [...]
Consequential religion strikes fear in those who tragically have no faith. When they see that some believe firmly in a loving and Almighty God who takes an active role in worldly affairs, they sense the power of religion, and they suddenly become irrelevant. We live in times of inconsequential religion. That means most people do [...]
Thomas Sowell is quite content to make his case while he waits for the political tide to turn. The way things are going, this nonagenarian may still be on hand when conservative black politicians are the major American voice of this American minority. If and when that happens, wherever Thomas Sowell is, he will know [...]
The Bolsheviks were coming! The news was enough to make the blood of the people of the village of Suessenbergrun run cold. The Bolsheviks were atheists. They had no human decency, no respect for human lives. In this atmosphere I tried to settle into my normal parochial duties. But these very duties were colored with [...]
The Red Rose Revolution brought about by Princess Diana's tragic death was a triumph of sentimentality over reality. In the intervening twenty-five years, that sentimentality has prevailed in England, sweeping away the sterling values that had been the hallmark of English character. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have watched the most recent [...]
The American constitutional tradition stretches back beyond our shores to England. It is a tradition shaped on this continent by experience and the character of the people. In this vision, local communities play the primary role in government, protecting the fundamental institutions in which good character is formed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, [...]
Although Christians cannot be above the fray because we are part of it—called and commanded to love our neighbours, and even our enemies—we are nonetheless beyond the fray in the sense that we are called to something beyond it. “My own view is that Christianity is all about progress,” wrote ‘Eric’ in a comment on [...]
The man who sets out only to be human somehow becomes less than human. We ignore the highest things at our peril. Human things are finite, incomplete; nonetheless, they are real and worthy. They are worth keeping. For the truth of knowledge is measured by the knowable object. For it is because a thing is [...]