How exactly do music schools intend to train their students to “spark positive change.” Are they putting the string section through classes in the theory and tactics of social and political activism? In the first part of this series, I acknowledged the growing consensus that there is something wrong with higher music education today, and [...]
Where have all the grown-ups gone, Long time passing? Where have all the grown-ups gone, Long time ago? Those of my generation might recall the song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, a hit record by the Kingston Trio, among others, composed by Pete Seeger. Part of the folk music revival of the 1950s and [...]
“College professors are overwhelmingly liberal. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it.” This statement was not made by a conservative academic, columnist, or businessman. It was made by sometime professor and left-wing commentator Damon Linker. There is some good news in the fact of Mr. Linker’s acknowledgement of the obvious—but not much. American [...]
Those who have read The Lord of the Rings will know about the palantiri, the seeing stones which we look into at our peril. Anyone who looks into one of these stones does not see a complete lie. On the contrary, what he sees might be true. The problem is not that he is seeing [...]
One of the most remarkable characters of the English Revolution of the sixteenth century is Elizabeth Barton. An illiterate mystic who challenged Henry VIII to his face, and was eventually martyred for her stance, Barton influenced the course of history as a small boulder affects the flow of a mighty river. Elizabeth Barton was born [...]
Of course, the real term is “The Benedict Option,” and it does not refer to our retired Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, but rather to St. Benedict of Nursia, who in the collapse of the Roman Empire fathered a way of living that kept Christian civilization alive: the monastic order. Oddly enough, like Benedict XVI, it [...]
Once upon a time a professor of philology, (that is to say, a lover of language), was daydreaming in his university rooms when he scribbled on the back of an anonymous exam paper, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…” Thus was begun a true story—one of the greatest of the true [...]
Flee fro the pres, and dwelle with sothfastnessë, Suffyce unto thy good, though it be smal; For hord hath hate, and climbing tikelnessë, Pres hath envye, and welë blent overal; Savour no more than thee bihovë shal; Reule thyself, that other folk canst redë; And trouthë shal delivere, it is no dredë. […]
The class of surplus things we might call meta-luxury because, though they represent luxuries in the sense that they exceed our basic needs, what we value in them lies beyond anything we could define as material luxury. Classical music is only one example of this special category. In the first part of this series, I [...]
I have a recurrent nightmare. I dream that I never had the opportunity to teach the history of the West. I invariably awaken drenched in a cold sweat, wondering how my own intellectual development would have been stunted had I not been compelled to explain to undergraduates the accomplishments and failures, the complexities and tensions, [...]
G. K. Chesterton once remarked that we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds but in the best of all impossible worlds. Such apparent optimism might seem a little glib, at best, or outrageously naïve at worst. Wouldn’t it be much more true to say that we are in the grip of vice-like [...]
When Pope Benedict warned about “the Dictatorship of Relativism,” he meant it. Literally. This was hammered home not long ago when I was speaking to a group of students about the issue of same sex marriage. I prefaced the discussion with a description of relativism saying that this non-philosophy was now the mainstream, default setting [...]
Who loves employee codes of conduct? Given how sprawling and lawyerly many of them are, who can even read them? If you’re a boss who is thinking of scrapping yours and embracing one that reflects the values embodied in your company’s slogan, like Google’s “Don’t be evil” or Zappos’ “Be humble,” your employees will certainly [...]
Not so very long ago, Best Beloved, it was a gray February afternoon, near about tea-time. The winter seemed to have ended, but the spring had not quite arrived; and so there, at the edge of the forest, the animals were in a quandary. The crocus had come and gone; while, running late from somewhere, [...]