If we are to be truly inclusive and truly representative, we need to hone in on what it is to be truly human. What is it that unites all people across all races, all generations, and all classes at all times? The Great Books of Western Civilization are not merely artifacts to be respected and [...]
Fasting is far more than just an obligation or even a discipline; it is connected with the very mystery of life and death, of salvation and damnation. “Fasting is a medicine.” — St. John Chrysostom “The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” — Matthew 9:15 [...]
To the 21st-century reader, the suggestion that cinema is a destructive and corrosive force will likely appear absurd. To attentive cultural critics of the early 20th century, however, it was all but self-evident. You’ve heard it before, certainly: The screens are killing us. They play to our basest passions and appetites, rendering us passive, and [...]
What happened? How did institutions of higher education founded with such clear-eyed Christian missions, centered on moral and academic flourishing, go so far astray? There was once a time when religiously affiliated liberal-arts institutions were just that: havens of the time-honored liberal-arts tradition that sought to shape both students’ minds and hearts in accordance with [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien poured his heart and deepest sense of what “right” reality meant into his subcreative work. His world of Middle Earth is based on monarchy, tradition, obscure and yet profoundly meaningful rituals involving sacred and elevated languages. It is peopled by kings and peasants, wizards and sorcerers. Its economy is distributist. The men of [...]
The necessity of personal morality in a thriving community is denied by the enemies of the permanent things, who do not believe that there are permanent standards of behavior or indeed an unchanging human nature, and who seek to create political systems that will make everyone happy without much effort. Enemies of the Permanent Things: [...]
Tradition is the extension of democracy through time. It is the proxy of the dead and the enfranchisement of the unborn. “Tradition may be defined as the extension of the franchise,” wrote Chesterton. “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.” And he [...]
The fame of the saints is not only good but should be proclaimed from the hilltops. The fortunes of the rich, if used charitably, are goods that can do a lot of good in alleviating suffering and edifying souls. It is not fame or fortune that is the problem but the prideful pursuit of fame [...]
If Christmas is anything, it is a revolution of the heart against the tit-for-tat of this world, against the demands of this world for balancing the scales and righting every wrong with a hard justice. Ultimately, if this world is saved, it will be mercy, not justice, that saves it. I. When the Outlandish Is [...]
Harry Jaffa’s constitutional history of America’s late-eighteenth-century is not credible nor, in keeping with many of his own pronouncements, is it conservative. The writing of history, as we have learned from authors as diverse as Thucydides, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Butterfield, Collingwood, and Oakeshott can and has been done in strikingly different ways while serving radically different [...]
It would be far too easy to see this life as merely a vale of tears—a time of trial we must experience and through which we must suffer with such virtue as we can muster, so as to reach a higher reward in the next life. What then could possibly make this life, on its [...]
T. S. Eliot offers neither a program for success nor a recipe of happiness, no remedy, nostrum or elixir, but simply the counsel of hope, the example of his prudence, play, and compassion, all as part of the imperative of the unremitting spiritual discipline of tradition. In 1953, the first edition of The Conservative Mind [...]
True unity among men must have its roots in that common participation in the holy tradition reaching back to an utterance of God Himself. One wonders whether tradition is not actually anti-historical. It stands in stark contrast to the most impressive and most visible strand of the historical process, namely, the ever-advancing scientific investigation of [...]
In stressing the importance of beauty and formality, the young fogey movement provides an antidote to modernity’s utilitarianism and narcissistic childishness. Looking into the life of a contemporary English writer, I happened upon a reference to the “young fogies” of 1980s England, an assortment of men then in their first decade or two of adult life [...]