As the man pleaded his case, Father Maximilian Kolbe came forward and offered his life for the one pleading. The German commandant of Auschwitz—probably rather shocked—agreed, and Kolbe, with nine others, stripped naked and entered the concrete bunker. As Hillsdale students approach my desk on the fourth floor of Delp Hall, several things stand or [...]
For Eric Voegelin, all modern ideologies—left or right—were simply Gnostic attempts to order a disordered world according to ritual and knowledge. This essay concludes my three-essay series on Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). In the first essay, I discussed Voegelin’s own influence on my intellectual development over the past 37 years. I also, rightly or wrongly, questioned [...]
Eric Voegelin stressed that progress falsely demands the sacrifice both of man and God. With history and progress as false gods, the man who would attempt to derail or thwart history is the sinner and may thus, justifiably, be removed, even if by bloody force. In my previous essay, I considered the ways in which [...]
In his personal letters, Eric Voegelin not only mocked Russell Kirk and conservatism, but he also freely admitted that he cynically accepted funding from conservative sources, even though he had no sympathy with conservatism. And yet he was a genius, one of the single finest thinkers of the 20th century, and perhaps the single finest [...]
"It is Christianity which is at once the original bond of European unity," Christopher Dawson argued, "and the source of the spiritual ideals and the attitude to life which inspired our civilization. The enemies of Europe recognize this fact more clearly than we do ourselves." The Movement of World Revolution, by Christopher Dawson (176 pages, [...]
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 [...]
As revolutionary as they claimed to be, the French Revolutionaries were as old as sin, Edmund Burke assured his readers. “Trace them through all their artifices, frauds, and violences,” he argued, and “you can find nothing at all that is new.” Roughly four-fifths into his spectacular Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke paused. [...]
Kevin Belmonte’s glorious "G.K. Chesterton on Life" is a beautifully edited and compiled book, which looks at Chesterton’s character and personality, as well as his views on philosophy, nature, poetry, wit, London, words, proverbs, Modernity, literature, hearth and home, and, finally, Christmas. It is a delight of epicurean proportions. G.K. Chesterton on Life: Encountering His [...]
Historians past and present have offered many guides to the Founding era, but what make Bradley Birzer's account so delightful are his wholehearted patriotism and the fairness with which he tells the story. In this telling, we hear the dramatic, symphonic nature of one of the most exciting political times ever recorded in the course [...]
The Americans of the Revolution wrote about the new man who leaves behind his old prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the mode of life he embraces, and whose labors would change the world. But, one must ask, to what extent was this true? Just exactly how new was the American of 1775? In [...]
In his new book, Michael Lucchese shows us that Russell Kirk believed that America—in world history and in God’s providence—served as a Platonic anamnesis, a thing that forces us to remember what is eternal, good, true, and beautiful, through right reason in the very womb of time itself. Russell Kirk on America: How to Understand [...]
Because it is based on natural laws and timeless truths, the republic can be ignored, it can be mocked, and it can be forgotten, but it can never be fully undone. All it takes is an anamnesis, something to rouse us from our slumbers and reassert its many truths and goodnesses and beauties. Long live [...]
What do the women and men who occupy the innumerable office buildings on either of the Potomac think about those gun-toting revolutionary gentlemen of the eighteenth century? As I type this, I’m sitting in a restaurant near Gates 10/11 in one of the terminals (not sure which one) of Reagan/Washington airport. The place is packed, [...]
Though several scholars have considered J.R.R. Tolkien’s Catholicism, none of them have looked specifically at Tolkien’s understanding of liturgy and how that liturgy shaped not only Tolkien’s soul but his very art. At last, Ben Reinhard has done so in his brilliant book, "The High Hallow." The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, by Ben Reinhard (184 [...]