If all men truly desire by nature to know, as Aristotle claims, then a human society in which evidence is ignored or quashed or in which truth is a commodity cannot but destroy men—and itself. Those ideologies that are plaguing us are fruits of the refusal to heed the natural desire to know. The basics [...]
The authentic definition of “ecumenical” has nothing to do with the modern understanding of “ecumenism,” which appears to be the willingness to dilute or delete doctrine in pursuit of a perceived unity among disparate groups of believers. Being ecumenical is being evangelical, whereas the new-fangled word ecumenism is the failure to evangelize. It is important [...]
Samuel Johnson unfolds his thoughts not on dry philosophical subjects but on practical themes: the common virtues needful in everyday living and learning and behaving. His words are both honorable and useful, and he is a valuable companion on the undergraduate journey. The following is an advising memorandum addressed to undergraduate students. Perplexed and undecided: the [...]
Historiography is not an exchange in the marketplace but a fight on the battlefield. It has a particular point of view on the past and punishes opponents; it is power politics masked as tolerant neutrality. The Left—like those behind the 1619 Project—understand the stakes and are fighting to maintain their legitimacy. It is time the Right [...]
Radicals believe schools are instruments of power, but such schooling is false and a corruption of the thing itself. Radical schools are not bad schools; they are ideological shams pretending to be schools. Genuine schooling is oriented toward truth and cultivates wisdom and virtue. According to Russell Kirk, “to the radical—communist, or fascist, or socialist, [...]
Confusion is being sown in all corners of the globe. We cannot and must not lose sight of what is, of truth. Rather than stalking the internet, we must calm down, ask ourselves what is real and what is not, and relearn the art of distinguishing what is from what is being broadcast. How do [...]
Editorializing in news stories, once verboten, has now become de rigueur. Journalism, never perfect at any moment of its history, but full of aspiration to be objective and balanced, has now conceded entirely to Nietzsche’s critique of empiricism: “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Many years ago, in an earlier contentious era of American politics, [...]
Other university presidents, provosts, and deans need to support and emulate President Morton Schapiro of Northwestern University. If they can find the courage to support somebody else standing up against the mob, they might find that they have the courage to stand up to their own mobs and discover that when there is no pursuit [...]
Today, Theodore Roosevelt prompts us to ask the same question he raised over a century ago in his speech “The Man with the Muck-Rake”: How do we devote our attention to society’s problems without allowing them to devour us? Our survival in the Information Age hinges upon on our ability to address this problem. In [...]
The present bombing of Armenia and Artsakh is meant to fulfill the Young Turk dream of building an Empire. That dream is alive and well in Turkey’s government today. By honoring and listening to historian Bernard Lewis, we have become accomplices of that dream, that nightmare. It is time to wake up and hold fast [...]
To maintain sanity and perspective, we must recognize that beauty is a transcendent ideal in which art imperfectly participates, and thus hold beauty above art. The wrong turn is due to a conflation of beauty with art and the related tendency to see art as an end in itself. As conservatives we often undertake to [...]
The relationship between science and the humanities is unavoidable simply because genealogies, in the end, are an extension of man’s thinking that combines reality with myth. Thomas Kuhn seemed to accept this fact, but today his colleagues’ aversion toward myth and magic has effected new iterations of magic that are devoid of meaning and spirituality. [...]
Frequently in public forums, people forget Augustine’s simple truth: Words fail or succeed based on what truth or reality they represent to their audience. Augustine would ask us to further the “mutual intercourse of men” and remember that words serve us by their remembrance, their representation, and their reality. As a literature teacher, I thought [...]
The bold yet solution-adverse signatories of the “Harper’s” letter are pointing us toward a world where the left and right side of the aisle can once again amicably communicate. Nowhere is this more important than on college campuses, where students should be immersed in a world of thought and discourse that pushes the boundaries of [...]