It is not common that a person would recommend a philosopher to help you stay sane, but with the writings of Josef Pieper, if you have ever read even one of his books, you are likely to agree with me. Also, the range of his wisdom is most impressive. Some of the titles I have [...]
Historical consciousness is to civilized society what memory is to individual identity. Without memory there are no workable rules of conduct, no standard of justice, no basis for restraining passions, no sense of the connection between an action and its consequences. A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous. I am delighted to be with [...]
A certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seem so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause [...]
The truth is that for all its failings, America has provided more opportunity, security, and freedom to a group of people more diverse than any other nation in history. It is not because America is systemically rotten; but because it is foundationally good. Justice for all calls for those foundations to be defended, not destroyed. [...]
As shocking as it might seem to those who knew Russell Kirk as a bad (in terms of practice) Catholic, he deserves sainthood. Here is my case for Saint Russell of Mecosta. When I first started reading the works of Russell Amos Augustine Kirk in the fall of 1989, that most joyously fateful of seasons, [...]
Russell Kirk’s horror stories are fundamentally conservative, insinuating a chain of being that connects the living and the dead, reminding us of our duty and obligations to the past. They challenge us by piercing our day-to-day sense of the temporal with bright flashes of eternal order. And they lay upon us the heavy but joyous [...]
The novel "Salem’s Lot" proves that Stephen King is both a first-rate storyteller and a top-notch writer, who is especially good when describing the imagination of a child and the child’s ability to see things the adult no longer can. But is it a great work of horror? On November 17, 1979, two months after [...]
The Duke of Wellington was an exemplar of an older England—an England bound by blood, not interest. He affirmed the very English equality of manhood, which comes with honorable service in the line, the rule that he who is with the king on St. Crispin’s Day shall be by him called “brother.” The Great Duke, [...]
One of the most heinous crimes against humanity that modernity has perpetrated is its war on the humanities. And let’s not forget that the humanities are thus called because they teach us about our own humanity. A failure to appreciate the humanities must inevitably lead to the dehumanizing of culture and a disastrous loss of [...]
Ghost stories have been killed by a ghost—by the ghost in the machine of television, a murder not without irony. Hidden among the posh townhouses and expensive offices of Mayfair is the Savile Club, resembling a merry old English squire with threadbare cuffs. In the library upstairs above the black leather club-chairs, relics of the [...]
Both John Paul II and T.S. Eliot give people something to hope for: St. John Paul speaks of a new springtime on the horizon signaling the emergence of a culture of life, and Eliot ends “The Waste Land” on a hopeful, if cryptic, note. We are all familiar with Saint John Paul II’s description of [...]
"How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits If any man obtain that which he merits Or any merit that which he obtains." REPLY TO THE ABOVE For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain! What would'st [...]
Russell Amos Augustine Kirk is one of America’s foremost and most important thinkers, especially in the desiccated and mutilated 20th century, an era of horrific inhumanities and incessant blood-letting. Kirk stood for a more humane age that valued the dignity and uniqueness of each human person and that unabashedly sought the good, the true, and [...]
During my years of teaching, I have frequently admonished students with this deeply held conviction. If you can find a cultural critic or essayist that you enjoy, and he or she also happens to write fiction—read it. While Russell Kirk (1918-94) is best known as one of the founding fathers of post-World War II conservatism, [...]