Vinod Khosia has managed* to say a lot in a few words about the consequences of “the next technology revolution.” Let me just list some points for discussion: 1. That revolution comes when it’s finally possible to construct “systems with judgment and decision-making capability more sophisticated and nuanced than trained human judgment.” And it’s coming [...]
The twentieth century witnessed the shattering of the traditional social and moral order among nations as the infection of the ideologues and their murderous ideological regimes spread throughout the civilized world. It began in earnest with the assassination of a central European archduke and the consequent destruction of the Old World in 1914. But in truth, the [...]
“On a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises Sansculottism, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks: What think ye of me? Well may the buckram masks start together, terror-struck; ‘into expressive well-concerted groups!’ It is indeed, Friends, a most singular, most fatal thing.” Thus wrote Thomas Carlyle, reflecting upon [...]
Not long ago, The University Bookman (a fine online journal well worth the attention of imaginative conservatives) posted a review of an important book, The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics, edited by Michael Federici, Richard Gamble, and Mark Mitchell. This volume collects essays addressing the pretensions of our public life, populated as [...]
The most searching and dispassionate analysis will yield the irrefutable conclusion that summer is by far the worst season. Both presently and historically, the months when the northern hemisphere faces the full force of the sun are months of turmoil and destruction. Locally, a man will notice his powers suppressed by the sun, his energy [...]
Two hundred and twenty years ago, in January 1794, one of the more illuminating, but also neglected, episodes of the French Revolution was set in motion in the Vendée and surrounding area of west-central France (broadly, the modern-day administrative region of Pays de la Loire). Under the leadership of the Revolutionary general Louis-Marie Turreau, six [...]
The word “tyranny” has a long history in American political discourse. Since at least the American Revolution, Americans have used the word to describe political actions they find distasteful. But what is tyranny? Some have defined tyranny to be identical with monarchy; others identify it with any form of government which is not democratic, or [...]
In his politics and in his works, Burke spoke for the concept of the nation, and nowhere is this more apparent than in his Reflections on the Revolution in France[1] And rarely have his views been more relevant than in present-day America. Fortunately, Americans have never been subjected to a revolution as terrible as that of the [...]
In spite of all appearances to the contrary, the film “The War of the Vendée” shows us that to see things through the childlike eyes of Chesterton, or Frodo, or the people of the Vendée is to see them as they really are. If a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing badly… [...]
The following excerpts are from the chapter A Revolution Not Made, but Prevented in Kirk’s book Rights & Duties: Reflections on Our Conservative Constitution. Our excerpter, Darrin Moore, suggests—like a sommelier—that the reader might find The Beatles counter-revolutionary tune Revolution a perfect pairing to this article if one hopes for Kirk’s ideas to “ferment in the mind.” [...]
The long heritage of ideas, principles, norms and traditions that conservatives have sought to conserve since the age of Edmund Burke were magnificently chronicled in the groundbreaking book The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. In his book The Roots of American Order, Kirk traced the rich heritage of Western Civilization farther back through London to ancient Rome, Athens [...]