One doesn’t have to agree with everything Michael Novak argued to recognize the genius of the man. Like all true conservatisms, his democratic capitalism was as much an anti-system as anything recognizable as a system. He was a giant of an intellect, and his best book deserves to be remembered, even if in friendly opposition. [...]
Michael Jahosky argues in his new book that J.R.R. Tolkien engaged in the telling of a parable, and that the great author wanted to create Christian art and mythology, not Christian propaganda. The Good News of the Return of the King by Michael T. Jahosky (230 pages, Wipf and Stock, 2020) Scholar Michael T. Jahosky [...]
Propaganda has both short-term and long-term consequences. In the short term, propaganda can influence people to support particular policies, even if those policies cut against their best interests. In the long run, propaganda erodes democratic foundations. The Imaginative Conservative's Brad Birzer interviews Abigail R. Hall, co-author of "Manufacturing Militarism," which Dr. Birzer reviewed in these [...]
Expertly researched and well written, "Manufacturing Militarism" considers the history of propaganda over the last 100 years of American history, focusing especially on the Iraq War and the continuing War on Terrorism. Manufacturing Militarism: U.S. Government Propaganda in the War on Terror by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall (Stanford University Press, 2021) Given [...]
For all intents and purposes, Russell Kirk became Russell Kirk the day he realized that there was no need to fear death. Every once in a while, someone online—being either sincere or sincerely mischievous—loves to ask about the status of unrecognized saints. Who is the person most likely to be saint that the church has [...]
The Battle of Fort Sumter lasted 34 hours, killed no one, and wasted 4,000 Confederate rounds and 1,000 Federal rounds. At that point, it was one of the largest artillery battles ever fought on North American soil. The Confederates loved the glory and honor, as they understood it, when Abner Doubleday fired back, paid to [...]
In early March of 1861, without Abraham Lincoln’s authorization, Secretary of State William Seward told Southern commissioners as well as the Northern press that Lincoln would not fight for Fort Sumter. When the Commissioners demanded to meet with a Lincoln official on March 14, 1861, Seward properly declined, but agreed, in a rather complicated fashion, [...]
The hardest decision of Abraham Lincoln's presidency revolved around the Confederate garrison stationed at Fort Sumter. On March 5, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, only president for a day, had to make a decision on what to do. Lincoln had a divided cabinet, a divided party, and a divided country. Half of his cabinet wanted war with [...]
Just as no person can last forever, no republic can last forever. The trick, however, to prolonging its life is to promote that which gives it energy and vigor in its youth—virtue—and that which also staves off the inevitable tepidness that accompanies mid-life: audacity. No true republican believes that a republic lasts forever. Far from [...]
What is happening right now in regard to the UFO activity recently acknowledged by the U.S. government is fascinating. The questions raised by the possibilities take us back to first principles, causing us to ask: What is man? Who is God? And what is man’s relationship to his fellow man and to God? More than [...]
Though deeply conflicted about Romanticism, C.S. Lewis believed that the Romantics at least asked the right questions and found the right answers. But he also held that they failed to grasp the greater picture of things, which only Christianity truly understands. Somewhat famously, as described in Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis believed that he had [...]
Owen Barfield argued that the modern world must readopt the truths of the Logos, should Western Civilization move beyond its current selfish and totalitarian phase. And this rediscovered love of the Logos must express itself throughout culture and the arts. In 1944, over a decade after Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, half a decade after Tolkien’s [...]
“A book is a word spoken into creation. Its message goes out into the world. It cannot be taken back,” Michael O’Brien warned as well as assured in his magisterial novel, Sophia House. Just as each word is a reflection of The Word (Logos), so each book is a reflection of The Book. While Christians [...]
Niccolò Machiavelli openly embraced the use of power and utility over the restraint and charity of love and dignity. In Machiavelli’s corruption, “prudence” came to mean knowledge of when to choose good and when to choose evil. In his magisterial Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk tried to put the Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter Reformation [...]