Brave young men, overcoming terror with their willingness to fight, came from the corn-fed plains of America to do battle with tyranny. Many of them gave the ultimate sacrifice, as they bled out into the sand below me. Was the blood-spattered sacrifice of lives on D-Day commensurate with the soft, effete, and self-indulgent lives of [...]
When Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet regime as the “evil empire,” he was echoing Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who said the USSR was “the concentration of world evil.” From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitols of the ancient states [...]
Barbara J. Elliott remembers the fall of the Berlin Wall, and draws attention to the individuals who, through faith and love, made this momentous event possible. Having interviewed many of those who were imprisoned, beaten, ostracized, and forced underground during the rule of the communist regime, Professor Elliott tells with passion the stories of the [...]
The musical Hamilton is star-spangled patriotic and worthy of attention, even though hip-hop may not be the favorite musical genre of most Imaginative Conservatives. Why? Intelligence finds the answer to a question, but genius answers a question no one else has thought to ask. The genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda leapt across three centuries to answer [...]
Is happiness rooted in pleasure, as many pop songs assert? Or does happiness stem from wealth, honor, wisdom, or political power? Aristotle contends that true happiness depends on a certain kind of understanding of the mind and soul to correctly apprehend what is true. The song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams has gone viral, topping the [...]
After changing health insurance providers and having difficulty getting prescriptions filled, I was getting testy. Very testy. Then I read that the new national insurance program would be released on 35 floppy discs, and that did it. I knew there was no help coming from Washington any time soon. In a slow burn that waxed [...]
At 8 a.m. on August 29, as Dirk and Petra Wunderlich began the day’s homseschooling classes with their four children, a team of twenty armed special agents, social workers, and police with a battering ram stormed the family’s home in Darmstadt, Germany. The children were forcibly taken from their parents in a raid that was [...]
As Americans enter the voting booth today, we will be making a momentous decision for our nation. Whose vision will we embrace? Three groups of people are split, and they may very well determine the outcome: women, Hispanics, and Catholics. And the concern that drives many of them is “who really cares?” The people who [...]
6/6/84 President Reagan giving speech on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day at Pointe du Hoc Normandy France This morning I had one of those startling moments when time folds back on itself, as I remembered a convergence of events that all took place in this sunny week of June, albeit in different years. [...]
The ever-elegant and thoughtful Barbara Elliott (yes, OUR Barbara) was on the Mike Church show today. Congrats to Barbara for sharing her always inspiring insights on the nature of American character and community, and congrats to Mike Church for having such good taste in his choice of guests. Click here for the interview with Barbara [...]
Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities by Barbara J. Elliott Some of the world’s greatest people are largely unknown, for they accomplish positive, life-changing deeds in quiet, unannounced ways. Their work is unreported and largely unknown outside their immediate circle of influence. A great number of such people lack political connections and every characteristic of celebrity, and [...]
Who really cares? People who mistrust big government give more of their money and time as volunteers to take care of the poor themselves. Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism America’s Charity Divide, by Arthur C. Brooks (250 pages, Basic Books, 2007) We live in two Americas: “America the Selfish” and “America [...]