The Unbounded Eros of “Tristan and Isolde”

By |2021-05-18T16:11:57-05:00November 25th, 2016|Categories: Culture, Featured, Love, Music, Peter Kalkavage, Philosophy, St. John's College, Virtue|

Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde should prompt us to search for an antidote to the lovers’ death wish—to pursue a love that preserves rather than destroys, celebrates rather than abolishes individuality, and seeks life rather than death. “They who were two and divided now became one and united.” —Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde I come [...]

Abandoning Virtue, Abandoning Human Nature

By |2017-03-09T11:02:26-06:00November 1st, 2016|Categories: Virtue, William Shakespeare|

William Shakespeare’s women display virtue while being tested in extreme situations not of their own making. One of the greatest of them, Viola in Twelfth Night, is in extreme circumstances to which she must apply the virtue of patience. That “patience is a virtue” has been proverbial since the Middle Ages—Chaucer’s Franklin in The Canterbury Tales [...]

Virtue Is Not Boring

By |2022-09-29T11:36:01-05:00October 27th, 2016|Categories: Virtue, William Shakespeare|

Language…most shows a man. —Ben Jonson Aristotle’s famous statement that virtue is a mean between two extremes is generally not quoted in its entirety. He does indeed say, “In respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean”—that is, a mean between two opposed vices. Courage is a mean between [...]

Whatever Happened to the Dignity of the Human Person?

By |2016-12-16T11:14:54-06:00October 27th, 2016|Categories: Culture, Donald Trump, Featured, Joseph Pearce, Politics, Virtue|

So much has been said and written about the present Presidential election campaign that many of us are no doubt feeling overloaded with unwanted and ill-tempered debate and are suffering from political-spin-fatigue. This being so, I have no desire to add to the political overload nor do I intend to descend to the sewers and [...]

Can We Restore Dignity to Our Degraded Times?

By |2016-10-16T22:31:05-05:00October 16th, 2016|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Culture, Donald Trump, Marriage, Nature, Politics, Presidency, Virtue|

The message is loud and clear. Your actions have no more significance than those of a cockroach. Furthermore, like a cockroach, you are in no position to make moral choices of your own free will. When you commit some hideous brutality, it is not that you decided to do so. No, on the contrary, external [...]

Tiny Houses, Charity, and Community

By |2016-10-02T22:24:33-05:00October 2nd, 2016|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Culture, Military, Virtue|

A recent essay in another online journal tells a heartwarming story from Kansas City that involves tiny houses. For those of you who do not know what a “tiny house” is, it is simply a house that is very small (obvious enough?) meaning 400 square feet or less. I have written, here, about the “tiny [...]

Are We a Nation of Liars?

By |2019-08-27T16:55:31-05:00September 29th, 2016|Categories: Donald Trump, Dwight Longenecker, Featured, Politics, Truth, Virtue|

We were preparing the annual financial report to the parish the other day, and the tricky part of the debate was how to present complex details in a simple way that was not misleading or open to misinterpretation. I commented that we must aim for complete transparency, at which point a member of the committee [...]

The Good and the Holy

By |2022-04-28T14:17:24-05:00September 20th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Faith, Glenn Arbery, St. John Henry Newman, Virtue, Wyoming Catholic College|

After the ceremonies on August 28 [Dr. Arbery’s inauguration as President of Wyoming Catholic College], Pres. Michael McLean of Thomas Aquinas College in California presented me a gift: John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons. Of course, I know Newman from other works, but I have never read his sermons. […]

Nazissism: The Totalitarianism of the Self

By |2023-05-15T19:56:27-05:00September 8th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Featured, G.K. Chesterton, Homosexual Unions, Joseph Pearce, Philosophy, Virtue|

In our modern age, the dragon of pride has been unleashed to do its worst, narcissism turned to Nazissism. More than a century ago, in 1911 to be precise, Holbrook Jackson published a book entitled Platitudes in the Making, a volume of aphorisms expressive of Jackson’s radical relativism. “Truth,” Jackson proclaimed platitudinously, “is one’s own [...]

John Adams on Nobility and Social Architecture

By |2021-10-29T11:34:38-05:00September 8th, 2016|Categories: Adam Smith, American Founding, American Republic, Civil Society, History, John Adams, Virtue|

Even when wealth and noble birth are connected with talents, the two sets of talents differ, and those possessed by the nobleman are likely to be of greater worth than are those possessed by the man of wealth. Within his general view of man as naturally social, John Adams explored the nature of the passion [...]

Justice: An Art Form?

By |2019-11-19T17:25:42-06:00September 3rd, 2016|Categories: Conservatism, Featured, John Locke, Justice, Plato, Russell Kirk, Virtue|

Calls for “social justice” have a bad habit of appearing in caricature: the throwback hippiedom of Occupy Wall Street, the race-baiting rallies of Al Sharpton and other hucksters, the abortion proponents who think the First Amendment was written to protect their “right” to dress up as genitalia. If ever “social justice” was a content-rich term, [...]

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