By any objective standard, it would be difficult to claim that the Constitution really matters at any practical level in the United States. At a symbolic level, it still means a great deal. But, what a disconnect: that it matters so much in our minds and language but that it means nothing in our day-to-day [...]
C.S. Lewis’ best novel, That Hideous Strength (1945), is a story first and foremost about marriage. As Lewis properly understood it, marriage is our first and most important institution in resisting evil as well as the ever-looming and hovering chaos of our modern and post-modern whirligig we call "Western society." "Matrimony was ordained, thirdly," said [...]
The West will not contain communism; it will transcend communism. For two full minutes on May 17, 1981, the attendees of the graduation ceremonies at the University of Notre Dame offered President Ronald Reagan a standing ovation.[1] He entered the ACC—Notre Dame’s basketball and hockey arena—accompanied by priests, professors, and diplomats. Throughout his time on the [...]
"The Killing Fields" makes the horrors of communism palpable in ways even the greatest books can not. And it demonstrates rather conclusively that cinema as a medium can reach the level of the greatest art. In the late winter/early spring of 1985, I attended a showing of the most immersive and artful movie I had [...]
The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement, by Ulrich L. Lehner (Oxford University Press, 2016) The Catholic Enlightenment is a great book. Indeed, no recent academic work on Catholicism has raised my hopes this high for the current level of scholarship since first having encountered the writings of Christopher Dawson a decade and [...]
“The Republican Party, which achieved its greatest vigor in this century during the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan, now seems in the sere and yellow leaf.” – Russell Kirk, February 27, 1991, the day before President George Bush declared victory with Operation Desert Storm. Scholars Bradley J. Birzer and Adam Fuller reflect on Russell Kirk’s [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien’s love of the Anglo-Saxon language and culture is legendary among both Tolkien scholars and aficionados, as is his hatred of all things French. His biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, wrote that he suffered from “Gallophobia.”[1] His student and friend, George Sayer, commented that when Tolkien stayed with him and his wife, he very politely ate [...]
The day of the printed journal of imagination—dealing with ideas, literature, and poetry—seems to be fading. To be sure, it has been fading rather dramatically ever since the Second World War. Political and ideologically-oriented magazines, specialized academic journals packed full of discipline-specific jargon, and even the so-called best sellers have replaced the journals of imagination. [...]
Sadly, very few Americans remember Canon Bernard Iddings Bell (1886-1958)—this, despite the excellent work done by Cicero Bruce and Lee Cheek in his name. And, in his own day and age, Bell served as one of the leading scholars of what would eventually be called conservatism. He relentlessly defended the western canon and the liberal [...]
“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing that Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves a mark.”—Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1997) Sometime around the year 2000, I was flying to Houston. On the way to the Detroit [...]
No creature in all of creation has it as difficult as do humans. Being flesh as well as spirit, humans share in the natures of both the animals and the angels. Unlike either, however, the human has true free will. We choose good and ill at every moment of our lives. Animals, merely creatures of [...]
“This is going to be a grim job for all of us, to put it mildly, but it’s… important. We owe those victims our best work, whether we rescue anyone alive or only recover remains.”— James Greer in Commander in Chief I am sure that I am not alone among The Imaginative Conservative community in [...]
In my previous essay, “Eric Voegelin: A Primer,” I had the privilege to offer a brief sketch of this German intellectual’s life and thought. In this essay, I would like to explore one of Voegelin’s three most important ideas: his critique of Gnosticism. As in the previous essay, I am drawing heavily upon the fine [...]
Seventeen years ago, I flew into Seattle. I do this a lot, but this was one of those flights. Not just any flight, but one of THOSE flights. The kind in which everything seems to go wrong. Delays, turbulence, more delays, and then a few more delays. By the time I got to my hotel in [...]