Wendell Berry In this lecture Mr. Berry challenges our assumptions about the economy, our culture and our place in the world. He also asks profound questions regarding our connections with each other and the environment. Will we seek to escape our limits and reconnect with nature, our families, our neighbors and our own [...]
While studying at the University of Dallas in the early ’90’s, I was taught and influenced by a few notable professors, such as Janet Smith, Frederick Wilhelmsen, Wayne Ambler, Leo Paul de Alvarez, along with a few others. Following Prof. Wilhelmsen after many class lectures back to his office or at least to the university mall, I [...]
The Southern Critics: An Anthology Edited by Glenn C. Arbery, ISI Books A Southern critic by any other name would be an Agrarian or Fugitive. Four of the writers featured in this book defended their way of life against modernity 80 years ago at Vanderbilt University in “I’ll Take My Stand.” The others given voice here [...]
Among the contributions to I’ll Take My Stand, Allen Tate’s “Remarks on the Southern Religion” is usually interpreted as the most acerbic, immoderate, and unusual essay in the collection. All too often the essay is read as an apologia for violence or an eccentric defense of tradition. In fact, Tate–like his fellow Agrarians–was seeking to [...]
I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling [...]
As I’m thinking about the various influences on Kirk (and, hence, the post-WWII American Right), I started thinking about the Southern Agrarians as well as the English Distributists. There are many who write for this blog who know far more about these groups than I do. But, from what I can tell, this American version [...]
At the double-digit Catholic high schools across Cincinnati, most of them participate in KAIROS, a spiritual retreat. Myself included, hundreds of students attend and have attended the retreats every year as juniors and/ or seniors. The motto of this retreat is “Live the Fourth,” which essentially means, live every day like it is the fourth day [...]
In one of his syndicated columns published during the 1970s, the founder of The University Bookman famously wrote, “There is nothing more conservative than conservation.” Russell Kirk, considered one of the founders of post-war conservatism—that supposedly heartless, devil-catch-the-hindmost view of life that (again, supposedly) considers nature a nuisance to be tamed or destroyed—was a great admirer of [...]