If conservatism is true, it is true for all times, all places, and all persons. It might take on a Christian character here, or a Jewish character there, or a Stoic character way over there, but it remains universally tied to certain humane principles, whatever its local manifestations. It is imagination, perhaps our highest faculty [...]
May we always defend like Socrates and Cicero and Thomas More. May we always preserve like the monks of Lindesfarne. May we always see the world through the eyes of Russell Kirk, Christopher Dawson, and T.S. Eliot. May we always cherish the humanity and the divinity of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. [...]
The Catholic Church canonized Saints Thomas More and John Fisher in 1935, only two years after the appearance of "The English Way," a work edited by one of the most important Christian humanists and publishers of the twentieth century, Maisie Ward, and which looks at the lives, ideas, and deaths of the great Roman Catholic [...]
What’s rarely remembered about Barry Goldwater is how deeply influenced he was by the founder of post-war conservatism, Russell Kirk. I will admit, it’s hard for me to believe that Barry Goldwater ran for the presidency sixty years ago. Sixty years ago! I was born three years later, but I grew up in a very [...]
Unlike our present politicians, George Washington and Russell Kirk cared about the common good, strove for it, and constantly reminded us what it means to be a citizen of a republic. Dear Imaginative Conservative reader, as we approach this journal's fourteenth birthday, I owe a humble apology (bless me, Father, for I have sinned!) to [...]
Evil, according to Christopher Dawson, is a progressive force, and it has grown mightily over the centuries since the Reformation first tore apart the West. The Reformation led to secularization, and secularization led to the creation of a machine-like society, dehumanizing all citizens of the world. The modern world is the world of the anti-Christ, [...]
State-sponsored murder was the primary fact of the twentieth century—not the rise of democracy or the liberation of peoples, as many have been taught, but the devastating horrors of the gulag, the holocaust, and the killing fields. It was in June 1996 that I picked up a book that, for all intents and purposes, changed my [...]
Our world is rife with idealism—and that’s a bad thing. Consider our social policy where we dream of a world of perfect equality, rejecting obvious differences of sex, talent, and culture. The result is suppression of free speech (no room for a loyal opposition), mutilated children (a small price to pay for egalitarian paradise), and [...]
In “The Conservative Mind,” Russell Kirk sought to identify, elucidate, and cultivate the best of the Western tradition as the West itself weathered, rather roughly at times, the storms of ideologies. Conserve the past, yes, but Kirk also wanted us to rally to the standards of the past to leave an inheritance for our children. [...]
Bradley J. Birzer’s definitive biography is clearly a victory for old-school conservatism and the imagination. Old friends of Kirk and new ones alike will benefit from this work, and hopefully, even optimistically, will do so for generations to come. A few years ago I had the honor and pleasure of visiting Piety Hill, the familial home [...]
Even though President James Monroe could not fix the economy or dismiss the Missouri question, he could certainly distract the nation from its problems. In his second inaugural address, he gleefully announced a new target for American anger: The British were not allowing free trade between the United States and the English-occupied West Indies. Whatever [...]
Even though President Andrew Jackson’s announcement that he was the embodiment of the American people was populist, demagogic, authoritarian, and absolutely in violation of the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, his views on the Second Bank of the United States most certainly embodied the views of the average American. By the end of 1819, so [...]
Across the mighty Potomac sits the capital of our once noble and humane republic, founded upon the idea that all men are created equal, endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What do the women and men who occupy the innumerable office buildings on either of the Potomac think about [...]
Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill, knew J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Inklings personally. At one memorable lunch, Sir Martin gave me his impressions of these great men and of the Oxford of their day. During my time at Hillsdale College—having arrived in the fall of 1999—the college hired a number [...]