In the last stanza of “The Battle of Blenheim,” Robert Southey writes: “But what good came of it at last?” Quoth little Peterkin. “Why, that I cannot tell,” said he; “But ’twas a famous victory.” What did it really matter? The poet was asking of the triumph of the Duke of Marlborough — “Who this [...]
In late 2013, the Future Powers met quietly in Astana. Their decision tells us much about 21st Century geopolitics, the balance of power, and the role of decadence in the decline of nations and empires. The Chinese, Central Asians, Russians and Iranians are rebuilding the fabled Silk Road without the silk. In the short-run it [...]
Fyodor Dostoevsky Readers of The Imaginative Conservative know well the phrase “beauty will save the world.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn borrowed it from Fyodor Dostoevsky to set the theme of his Nobel Lecture in 1970. British conservative writer Roger Scruton has written extensively about how aesthetics—and beauty in particular—enlarges our vision of humanity, helps us [...]
More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened. Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of [...]