William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” presents a dark vision that captures the mood of our age, when all seems to be disintegrating into chaos. His prophetic foresight is even more remarkable in that he sees the Sphinx-like beast rising from the deserts of the East. While the world spins forward in what seems [...]
One may have had low expectations when his television show began in 1951, to put it mildly. The former radio broadcaster worked without a teleprompter or cue cards or referring to written notes, with only a blackboard for a prop, alone without guests or so much as a chair, delivering an almost full thirty-minute unscripted [...]
What kind of education would enable a child to progress in the rational understanding of the world without losing his poetic and artistic appreciation of it? Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education by Stratford Caldecott (178 pages, Angelico Press, 2012) Stratford Caldecott’s Beauty in the Word is like no book in the genre of [...]
In “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” Matthew B. Crawford tells a story of diminishment, outlining how we went from a nation of independent tradesmen, farmers, and shop keepers to cubicle dwellers. I am not a fan of Ask This Old House, the spin-off of the PBS home improvement program, This Old House. Formerly the companion series to [...]
Timothy Carney’s "Alienated America" tackles a crucial question that too few policymakers and news commentators even bother asking anymore: What is at the root of America’s contemporary cultural and social malaise? The short answer, according to Mr. Carney, is the deterioration of civil society. Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Other Places Collapse, by [...]
Beauty has an important place in the central activities of Catholic education. Learning requires discipline but deep down is a feast for the mind and heart. “Too late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!” St. Augustine was in his forties by the time he penned this personal lament. As readers of [...]
Propelled into Supreme Command, and without ever having commanded in battle, Dwight Eisenhower was put into an almost impossible situation, having to meet the demands of his battlefield subordinates while satisfying the conflicting expectations and orders of his masters, both military and political. Eisenhower at War, 1943-1945, by David Eisenhower (977 pages, Random House, 1986). [...]
Though eventually martyred for his selfless and Grace-filled efforts, St. Boniface succeeded in creating what we would now recognize as the beginnings of Europe: a synthesis of the classical, Christian, and Germanic. So, please, raise a glass to St. Boniface on his feast day, and to the many monks of history who helped build Western [...]
Ronald Reagan was truly a great president who led our nation through a critical period in our history, demonstrating tenacity, courage and faith. He faced down an enemy and never blinked. He inspired Americans to look to our better angels and reminded us that we hold the potential within us to do great things, with [...]
The irony of the prosperous decade of the 1950s is that the most popular person on the most visible proof of that prosperity—television—was a Catholic Bishop: "America’s Bishop," Fulton J. Sheen, who rejected feel-good, dishwater Christianity and instead boldly proclaimed the truth to his audience, 70% of whom were non-Catholic. Happiness, says the wicked Ambrose [...]
In essence, The Imaginative Conservative is a community of philosophers, dedicated to examining, understanding, and enjoying God’s creation. What better anthem for this journal than Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s remarkable Symphony No. 22 in E flat major, known as the “Philosopher” Symphony? Though the nickname was probably not Haydn’s, it was given to the work [...]
Crisp in whites, eight men up, four on a side, slow-step the horizontal coffin across the flat expanse of our carrier, toward the edge. The decks are quieted. Crews of men in oil-spotted work clothes give a wide perimeter. The air hangs vacantly, with no women present to stitch that familiar dense knot, that compact [...]
Richard Wagner’s story of gods and heroes, of giants and dwarfs, is not a fairy tale. It is addressed to modern people, who have lost the ways of enchantment, and for whom the path to heroism is overgrown. It is a story in which law and love, power and property are all caught up in [...]
The heightened pace of life in industrial societies, Charles Lindbergh realized, necessitated reflection on what type of life is best suited for man. Which of the two, reason or vital instinct, constitutes the best function of human beings? Which of the two contributes best to man’s happiness and lasting well-being? Charles Lindbergh begins his Autobiography [...]