On October 12, 1889, Mary Louisa and Henry Philip Dawson gave birth to a son, Henry Christopher. Descended from a long line of Celtic aristocracy, Mr. Dawson was born in a Welsh castle, an immense structure believed in myth to have been built all in a single night. His mother’s family had great standing in [...]
And, so it begins. The Hillsdale offices of The Imaginative Conservative have officially closed. Dr. Miles Smith IV will, happily, reside in what housed them for the next twelve months in southern Michigan. Just as true, the Longmont offices of The Imaginative Conservative are now open for business. Of course, HQ remains in Houston. But, [...]
Richard Weaver introduces Ideas Have Consequences (1948) by explaining that at the root of “the dissolution of the West” is modern man’s denial of universal truth and his progressive assumption that “the most advanced point in time represents the point of highest development.” Enlightenment thought attacked transcendental truth via the battering rams of nominalism, empiricism, [...]
To put it simply (and perhaps a bit “simplistically”—but I prefer to think of it as putting it “with fervor”), Christopher Dawson was one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, certainly one of its greatest men of letters, and perhaps one of the most respected Catholic scholars in the English-speaking world. I’ve have [...]
As the the conservative philosopher put it, his “unacceptable” views prompted character assassination, three lawsuits, two interrogations, one expulsion, the loss of a university career, contemptuous reviews, Tory suspicion, and the hatred of decent liberals everywhere. And, he swears, it was all worth it. Reality itself had been affronted. Repulsed, it had recoiled and collapsed [...]
When T.S. Eliot was lodging with his friend John Haward, the charwoman [the cleaning lady] was once asked about the famous man she worked for. Not knowing who Mr. Eliot was, she finally figured out who they were talking about and said, “Oh! you mean the holy man!” Mr. Eliot’s eleven years with Mr. Haward [...]
Bernard Iddings Bell Bernard Iddings Bell (1886-1958) wrote several controversial books examining the American way of life. These fine little books attracted considerable attention, many of them beginning as articles in the New York Times Magazine, Commonweal, and the Atlantic Monthly. By 1950 Bell, an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, was known [...]
Robert E. Lee once uttered one of history’s most searching observations: “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” What is the meaning of this statement, which is richer than a Delphic saying? “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of [...]
Last Saturday I had the honor of addressing the 50th anniversary meeting of the Philadelphia Society. The title of the meeting was “The Road Ahead—Serfdom or Liberty?” My remarks sought to suggest that conservatives should be more circumspect about their rote incantation of the word “liberty,” and that there may even be something to be [...]
My father was a born again businessman. A fervent Evangelical Christian, he owned and operated a chain of six men’s clothing stores in South Carolina. Sometimes his fellow Christians would ask, “Jim don’t you feel a bit guilty making so much profit?” “Not at all!” my Dad would grin, “I want to make as much [...]
Edmund Burke, Volume 1, 1730-1784, by F.P. Lock The Portable Edmund Burke, ed. Isaac Kramnick On Empire, Liberty and Reform: Speeches and Letters, Edmund Burke, ed. David Bromwich F.P. Lock’s Edmund Burke is the best biography of Burke to have come out in recent times, and it is all the more impressive for not trying to be what it [...]
In this video, Dr. Bradley Birzer of Hillsdale College discusses the humane tradition of the American founding and conservatism. We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and [...]
The scholarly journal Studies in Burke and His Time appeared originally, under the title The Burke Newsletter, in 1959. In 2002, the newly established Edmund Burke Society of America decided to revive the title, which had by then been in abeyance for some years, and, since that time, three issues (2005, 2007, and 2011) have [...]
Irving Babbitt did not believe that society could save itself by reform at the bottom. “All reform must start at the top,” among the leadership classes. For conservative thinkers the past 15 years have been a season of self-assessment. In moods of disenchantment, anger, and even betrayal many have staked out positions differentiating their views [...]