The best way to understand the Constitutional Convention and the original intent of the Founders is not by studying The Federalist Papers, but by examining the various notes recorded by James Madison. For fifteen years now, I’ve had the rather grand and humbling privilege of teaching the entirety of the U.S. Constitution to freshmen each [...]
Throughout "History in English Words," Owen Barfield discusses the influences of every possible cultural encounter on the English language. Language, he demonstrates, never stops in its evolution, moving from one point, one thought, one epoch to another, always shifting, always changing, but also always honoring. An extraordinary man by any measure, Owen Barfield (1898-1997), one [...]
Yellowstone National Park is something truly special. Everywhere you look, you see an abundance of nature—God’s creation at its most glorious: mountain ranges, vast meadows, deep canyons, pine tree forests, dynamic rivers and waterfalls, boiling and steaming geysers, petrified trees. President Ulysses S. Grant, former general of the Union Army in the American Civil War, [...]
Seeing himself and his allies on the losing side of the war against the modern spirit, Irving Babbitt made a fierce call to arms, advocating the need for a “remnant” to preserve all that is good, true, and beautiful. Irving Babbitt In his own day and age, Irving Babbitt’s (1865-1933) many opponents—from Ernest [...]
Even mainstream liberals today accept as fact that America is and always has been a racist system, built upon the backs of slaves. Yet American history itself was deeply divisive and extremely complicated, and after all, there is a finality to the subject: In the end, the United States abolished slavery, ending the scourge forever [...]
Irving Babbitt was an eccentric, armed with both a brilliant mind and personality. While we ought to remember his thought, we should also remember the man. As the leader of the American humanists, Irving Babbitt (1864-1933) stood solidly and forthrightly in the American conservative tradition of John Adams and Nathaniel Hawthorne and drew upon the [...]
The Constitutional Convention debated the issue of slavery over almost a week. In the end, the delegates reluctantly agreed to allow slavery for the sake of South Carolina and Georgia. We moderns and post-moderns can debate all we want, but the case is that the Convention came very close to abolishing slavery. Its acceptance of [...]
When Winston Elliott and I first started talking about what a proper online conservative journal might look like, way back in the spring and summer of 2010, we decided on a few things. Most importantly, we wanted real diversity of opinion, not the parroting of some ideological drudgeries. As such, we wanted all schools of [...]
Given that progressive rock tends to be literary and intelligent, it should not be shocking that there are also many great books coming out about the genre. Here are several recent books that every prog rock music lover should own. Amazingly enough, I’m one of the conservatives who also loves progressive rock music. To be [...]
Let not future generations say of us: We slept. Instead, may they remember us as those who fought the good fight for the Logos and for humanity. Let it be said that in the twenty-first century we took up either of our mythically-laden swords and wielded them with all the force imaginable. My talk today [...]
The barely-populated area of the Great Plains where the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is located is beautiful and peaceful—thus adding, in some strange, ironic, and disturbing way, to the surrealism of weapons designed there to end the world as we know it. We got up early, and we drove nearly two hours to see [...]
May God bless the librarians of the world. Unrecognized as such, they are the keepers and preserves of culture, and of our sanctuary islands in the maelstrom of turbulent modernity. My earliest memory of entering a library was sometime during my first few days at Wiley Elementary School in Hutchinson, Kansas. It was the fall [...]
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye, when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and [...]
As far back as I can remember, I’ve been taken with the human person—the ideal, the reality, the individuality. Not unnaturally, I first remember being in awe of my mom and my two older brothers. They seemed to do everything so well, and I admired each for his (or her) talents and grace. But, then, [...]