“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret”. -Salvador Dalí The delicate balance between creativity and tradition lies at the heart of artistic expression: if there is nothing unique about a work, it has been plagiarized; if it does not appeal to something its audience knows (or knows of, or is [...]
Respect for the notion of tradition comprises a core element within the paleoconservative bag of ideas. As it should. Respect for tradition constitutes one of those attitudes that separates the paleoconservative from both the neoconservative (for whom tradition begins some 200 years ago at most) and many libertarians (for whom the individual is an end in [...]
We live in very mean-spirited times. In spite of all the hypocritical cant about “love” and “tolerance” it can be shown that there is little real difference between the superciliousness of “progressivist” snobbery and the most pernicious forms of racism. If, for example, we were to visit a village in a remote corner of Africa [...]
In his conversations with the journalist Bill Moyers, the mythologist Joseph Campbell commented on the power of lived symbolism in communal life. When the judge comes out in a black robe, sits behind a high desk and calls the court to order with a gavel he is no longer an ordinary man. He is the [...]
Photo from the Daily MailQueen Victoria with Heirs Britain’s recent royal christening brings us two fascinating family photographs: one of Queen Victoria and another of her great-great-granddaughter, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, each accompanied by three future British kings. They may tell us something surprising about Time, Technology and Western Culture. The elder [...]
In English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition"; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is "traditional" or even "too traditional." Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in [...]
“The earth belongs in usufruct to the living.” These are not Thomas Jefferson’s most famous words, but they are quite famous among students of politics. They have been used for generations to justify radical political change. And, like the soaring rhetoric of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, these Jeffersonian words have gained him great [...]
To the National Executive Board, the Boy Scouts of America Dear Friends, For as long as I can remember I have loved the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). I was fundamentally shaped by the decade I spent as a Scout. Many of my closest friends and my younger brother were fellow Scouts. My father, who [...]
America, that bright, shining land of freedom, opportunity, and progress, is irredeemably corrupt. It is in the hands of debased and hypocritical politicians, judges, businessmen, and their servants, such as the debauched Hollywood film maker Jack Woltz, the belligerent New York police captain Mark McCluskey, the rapacious Las Vegas gambler Moe Greene, and the contemptible [...]
A guide to the paths that remain open when “tradition falls out of existence.” The position this paper will attempt to illustrate, if not demonstrate, is that once lost or weakened the tradition of a society can be restored only by a creative and even radical reconstruction of the tradition itself. The problem to which [...]
There is a cartoon that has, as they say, “gone viral” on the internet in the last two weeks or so. It’s one of the oldest threads from the Schultz empire, and one never tires of its utterly predictable and utterly funny ending. Lucy the capitalist progressive always wins, and Charlie Brown never learns. Here [...]
Patricia Christine Jellicoe Christmastime is fast upon us, and for many Americans it is an opportunity for spirituality and merriment, family, tradition and fret. Especially fret. No sooner have Black Friday and Cyber Monday unleashed their discounts, no sooner have what John Willson calls the “walmartians” beamed down to smite one another over [...]
“Nobody can make a tradition,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote; “it takes a century to make it.” There are American traditions, because there have been three centuries of American history; yet this is a brief period of time, when one remembers that some of the traditions of Europe and Asia and Africa have their roots in a [...]