The Ukraine Crisis: Is It Time to Debate War?

By |2022-03-31T21:04:39-05:00March 10th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Foreign Affairs, Senior Contributors, Ukraine, War|

With the Ukraine crisis, Americans have a moment to reflect on our obligations to the rest of the world. Just how far are we willing to go to protest Russia’s invasion? Are we content with extremely tight economic sanctions, or are we willing to flex the muscles a bit more? “War. What is it good [...]

The Inklings: Remembering and Preserving

By |2022-02-14T08:22:30-06:00February 14th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Senior Contributors|

In a Platonic sense, the Inklings might very well have brought about an "anamnesis," a remembering of what had been lost, but they might also very well have been simply preservers of timeless wisdom for many ages to come, so far into the future that they seem unimaginable. A number of things can be stated [...]

Who Were the Inklings?

By |2022-02-09T16:01:38-06:00February 3rd, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Senior Contributors|

Would it be possible, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis wondered in the 1930s, to write fiction that might combine: a love of history; a desire to debate the defenders of the modern world and point out the many foibles of modern living; and a way to promote one’s philosophical and religious beliefs without being overly [...]

Why Study History? A Personal Reflection

By |2022-01-28T00:27:10-06:00January 23rd, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, History, Senior Contributors|

I’m fascinated by time—its past, its present, its future, its moments, its transcendences. Time, as we’ve all experienced, moves quickly at points, and agonizingly slow at other points. There is something quite mystical about the nature of time and something truly mystical in the relationship of time to eternity. A few months ago, the history [...]

Irving Babbitt and the Crisis of Nationalism, 1915

By |2022-01-17T09:22:42-06:00January 17th, 2022|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Irving Babbitt, Senior Contributors|

For Irving Babbitt, a saving remnant of those who possess a humane understanding of the West and its great men and great ideas existed—one that could counter the nationalists and internationalists and those promoting either leviathan or the superman. In the 1910s, one of America’s greatest humanists, Irving Babbitt (1865-1933), surprisingly decided to dive into [...]

How the War of 1812 Changed the Republic

By |2021-12-29T14:38:56-06:00December 29th, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Timeless Essays, War|

The War of 1812 remains one of America’s least understood wars. Beginning with its rather banal title, most histories dismiss it as simply the growing pains of the early republic. Yet, this is unfair not only to the men and women who waged the war, but it’s also dangerous if one wants to understand the [...]

Harmony and Order: Giving Thanks

By |2023-11-22T22:57:53-06:00November 24th, 2021|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Living, Community, Leisure, Mayflower Compact, Thanksgiving, Timeless Essays|

In a season of disharmony, discord, distrust, and disorder, it is often painful to stop, to pause, and to give oneself distance enough to consider what must be recognized as good, and true, and beautiful, even in what seems a cesspool of existence. To give thanks, though, is not only necessary, it is salubrious! In [...]

Mayflower Compact or Plymouth Combination?

By |2021-11-20T15:19:06-06:00November 20th, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Mayflower Compact, Thanksgiving, Timeless Essays|

The Mayflower Compact is the first real assertion of the right to self-governance in the modern Western world and one of the most important in any time. On the first day of our spring semester, at the little liberal arts college at which I teach, I have for the last fourteen years had the joy [...]

Tolkien and the Roman Catholic Church

By |2021-11-06T22:39:31-05:00November 6th, 2021|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Senior Contributors|

Though J.R.R. Tolkien said that the Roman Catholicism only entered "The Lord of the Rings" consciously in its revision, one finds prayer, notions of hierarchy, and Catholic sacramental elements in the earliest conceptions of the legendarium. In 1900, much to the dismay of her family, Mabel Tolkien was confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. Her [...]

The Essence of Freedom & the Beginnings of Western Civilization

By |2021-10-27T15:01:39-05:00October 27th, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

As we ponder the meaning of history and ethics, we must ask: How do we reach unity without conformity? What should be conserved? And exactly what is freedom for? Our beginnings are quite noble and quite heroic. When the Persian god kings looked at the decentralized, myriad Greek City States, they were filled with pride [...]

The Essence of Freedom

By |2021-10-27T15:03:30-05:00October 25th, 2021|Categories: American Founding, Bradley J. Birzer, Freedom, Liberty, Senior Contributors|

Our rights as Americans can never be separated from our duties. But we must also ask, what is our liberty for? We live in an age of determinism, especially when it comes to academics and academia. There’s little choice, it seems, and everything is driven by some autonomous and often abstract forces, progressively (often) and [...]

Is the American Republic Dead?

By |2022-04-25T17:36:54-05:00October 13th, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Senior Contributors|

We Americans must ask: Is the republic alive? Should we despair? Are things any better in A.D. 2022 than they were for Rome in 43 B.C.? It’s been a rambunctious (or insert the descriptive of your choice) year and a half. We’ve endured—sometimes nobly and sometimes sordidly—COVID; lock downs; race riots; the tearing down of [...]

Hail, Christopher Columbus!

By |2024-10-13T21:35:46-05:00October 10th, 2021|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Civilization, Europe, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

The once-radical belief that Christopher Columbus was evil has sadly become mainstream. But Columbus was a brave and tenacious explorer—flawed, of course, like every man—who expanded the knowledge of the Old World, changing it and the New World forever. Christopher Columbus changed the world. It’s as simple as this. We might argue that these changes [...]

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