The Measure of Abraham Lincoln

By |2024-02-11T23:10:29-06:00February 11th, 2024|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Conservatism, Essential, Featured, Presidency, RAK, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays|

Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks [...]

Politics, Slavery, and the Civil War

By |2024-01-18T15:20:38-06:00January 18th, 2024|Categories: Civil War, Mark Malvasi, Politics, Senior Contributors, Slavery|

No episode in the American past is more susceptible to such manipulation—manipulation rather than debate—than the Civil War. On the historical question permit me to be blunt and unequivocal. There can be no doubt that slavery was central to all that divided the northern and the southern states, and that slavery was ultimately responsible for [...]

George Washington & the Patience of Power

By |2023-12-13T19:27:51-06:00December 13th, 2023|Categories: American Founding, Christianity, George Washington, History, Timeless Essays, Virtue, War|

In his courage and perseverance throughout the Revolution, George Washington revealed his reliance on patience—and feelingly used the word when referring to his men at Valley Forge. In contemporary American society, the relationship between patience and power is often wary and distant: If people have power, then they won’t have to wait. Recently, however, these two [...]

The Great Books of the Great War

By |2023-12-03T15:15:08-06:00December 3rd, 2023|Categories: Books, Literature, World War I|

Reconsidered, some classic works of the Great War challenge our customary apprehension of the literature of this period and prompt fresh thinking about these writings. The war and the widespread disruptions of the years following it stirred up questions about meaning and value, about ties between the past and the future, about the mystery and [...]

Warfare in Epic Poetry

By |2023-11-30T18:26:47-06:00November 30th, 2023|Categories: Beauty, Civilization, Culture, Heroism, Homer, Iliad, Literature, Poetry, Timeless Essays, War|

A culture that fails to represent, or that misrepresents its wars in all their glory, gravity, and tragedy, is a weaker polity. Epic poetry, with its stark recording of the facts and feelings of war, can give cultures and communities access to the reality of warfare and inscribe its memory on the collective consciousness and [...]

My Thirty-Third Year

By |2023-11-24T15:18:00-06:00November 25th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Communism, War, World War II|

The Bolsheviks were coming! The news was enough to make the blood of the people of the village of Suessenbergrun run cold. The Bolsheviks were atheists. They had no human decency, no respect for human lives. In this atmosphere I tried to settle into my normal parochial duties. But these very duties were colored with [...]

Requiem for a Soldier: Louis Awerbuck

By |2023-11-09T19:05:25-06:00November 9th, 2023|Categories: Classics, Sophocles, Timeless Essays, War|Tags: |

Louis Awerbuck believed that societies fell to folly when they drew distinct lines between their warriors and scholars. What this ultimately led to was a society’s thinking being done by cowards and its fighting done by fools. Awerbuck saw himself as the keeper of a tradition, a heritage of warriors in ages past, and civilization’s [...]

Conditions of a Just War

By |2023-11-04T12:39:57-05:00October 28th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christianity, Just War, War|

Since the God of justice is the God of charity it follows that although a war may be justified, one may not enter into it in a spirit of hate. We too often identify what is really a sin against charity with a love of justice. It is precisely against this divorce of justice and [...]

What “The Federalist” Really Says

By |2023-10-27T06:03:11-05:00October 26th, 2023|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, American Founding, American Republic, Equality, Featured, Federalist, Federalist Papers, James Madison, John Locke, Timeless Essays, Willmoore Kendall|

It is from careful textual analysis of “The Federalist” that the basic symbols of the American political tradition, and indeed the conservative tradition, may be found. III In his analysis of the Socrates of the Apology, Willmoore Kendall was hinting strongly at the probability that the contemporary John Stuart Mill-Karl Popper school in the United [...]

St. Pius V and the Battle of Lepanto

By |2023-10-06T20:38:31-05:00October 6th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Christendom, Europe, G.K. Chesterton, Islam, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, War|

Pope Pius, who had done more than anyone to make the Christian victory at Lepanto possible, is said to have burst into tears when news of it reached him. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has [...]

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