While the Reformation divided the Church, it must be said that it was brought on by her own inability and unwillingness to repent and turn to the Gospel. We can see some of the same trends today in our society and Church. As a conservative and a Catholic it is all too easy to look [...]
For their own sake, as well as the sake of the civilization which they love, conservatives can and should deny the state’s legitimacy, on the grounds that it is destructive of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Two philosophies rarely seem as opposed as conservatism and anarchism. The Continental, Throne-and-Altar variant of conservatism obviously [...]
Controversy surrounds the story of John Sullivan’s life. Yet he is among the representative Americans of his time—generous to a fault, jealous of his personal honor, optimistic, gregarious, ambitious, and “larger than life.” John Sullivan (1740-1795), lawyer, entrepreneur, soldier, and political leader of New Hampshire during and after the American Revolution. Both a commercial and [...]
Thomas Paine and others charged that Edmund Burke unhesitatingly defended the French monarchy, monarchy in general, corruption in the Church, and oppressive governments, as long as they provided stability. But is this true? When challenging the “coffee-house” radicals who were so gleefully leading the French into generations of ruin through their mad abstractions, Edmund Burke [...]
The American and French Revolutions provide a contrast between principle and ideology; between prudence and fanaticism; between prescriptive rights and extravagant ambitions; between historical wisdom and utopianism; between free government and democratic despotism. A little book forgotten for a century and a half, Friedrich Gentz’s Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, compared with the Origin and [...]
The image of reason cut adrift and order overthrown are universal symbols of enormous and compelling power. Each of us sees in the dethronement of discipline and order an immediate personal advantage… Eugene Delacroix, “Death of Sardanapalus” Henry Adams describes his famous autobiography with a charming picture of the ancestral household at Quincy. [...]
We ought to locate the basis of American conservatism in our colonial past, at a time when the English Tory variant of the old order of Europe had a real presence in our civilization, and we ought to remember that the old Tory order survived in the American historical tradition despite the Revolution of '76, [...]
When Edmund Burke surveyed the names of those leading the French Revolution in its first half year of existence in 1789, he despaired. Several were certainly good men, he noted, and many were quite accomplished. Yet, not a single man possessing any necessary experience in the world appeared on the list. “The best,” he lamented, [...]
The Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolutionary War, was signed in Paris on September 3, 1783. By the treaty, Britain recognized the independence of the United States, and boundaries between the two countries in the New World were determined. Other issues addressed included navigation and fishing rights, outstanding debts, property rights, prisoners of [...]
Was the American War of Independence a revolution? It was certainly not the sort of political and social overturn that “revolution” has come to signify. Was the American War of Independence a revolution? In the view of Edmund Burke and of the Whigs generally, it was not the sort of political and social overturn that [...]
You would not know it from the discussion on campus or in our high schools, but the best analysis of the American War for Independence was provided while it was still unfolding. The character of the Americans, the designs of the British Parliament, and the policies that brought these two into conflict were brilliantly analyzed [...]
A Catholic friend of mine is fond of referring to the Protestant Reformation as “the Deformation.” Well, perhaps. Certainly the Reformation in England was a deformation. Henry VIII’s stripping of the altars was not only a monumental act of iconoclastic vandalism, but the cultural revolution brought about by his break with Rome—which included the dissolution of [...]
David Brooks, the in-house Republican at the New York Times, recently wrote an angry column aimed at conservatives (whom he dubbed “right-wing radicals,” among other unfriendly epithets). Elsewhere it has been pointed out, in essence, that someone like Mr. Brooks who pronounced Barack Obama suited for high office on account of the amazingly sharp crease in [...]
Like all nations, France is an enigma. Admired by Hilaire Belloc for being the eldest daughter of the Church, she is also the harlot who sacrificed her own sons and daughters on the anti-Christian altars of secularist revolution. She has produced great sinners and even greater saints. Legend traces the roots of Christianity in France [...]