Dante’s Transformed Love: Musings on the Poet’s Love for Beatrice

By |2024-02-10T20:18:07-06:00February 10th, 2024|Categories: Art, Books, Christianity, Dante, Love, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

If the "Vita Nuova" had been the only major work Dante had made, this work alone would have earned him the reputation as a great poet of Western Civilization. It is well-known that Dante is one of the greatest poets in Western Civilization. His magnum opus, The Divine Comedy, is considered one of the crowning [...]

The Power of Ideology: Christopher Dawson on the Modern Age

By |2023-11-28T19:58:56-06:00November 28th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christian Humanism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Since the Renaissance, Christopher Dawson feared, Western culture and society had embraced an arrogant form of humanism, one that places too much emphasis on the goodness of the human person. With the loss of the Medieval beliefs in the Economy of Grace and the Great Chain of Being, culture had adopted two radically dangerous institutions: [...]

An Introduction to Conservatism for “Well-Meaning Liberals”

By |2023-11-15T05:47:05-06:00November 14th, 2023|Categories: Books, Conservatism, Economics, Government, Natural Rights Tradition, Political Philosophy, Senior Contributors, Thomas R. Ascik, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Instead of considering contemporary political issues, or politicians, Roger Scruton attempts to rebuild conservatism by looking seriously at its past. Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, by Roger Scruton (176 pages, All Points Books, 2018) In his Conservatism, An Introduction to the Great Tradition (2017), long-time Anglo-American conservative champion and author Sir Roger Scruton says [...]

Books That Make Us Human

By |2023-11-02T19:32:17-05:00November 2nd, 2023|Categories: Books, Books that Make Us Human, Bradley J. Birzer, Literature, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

When Winston Elliott created The Imaginative Conservative, he did so with the mission of addressing things that matter across time and for all of humanity—not just the political and economic problems and follies of the moment. In this, Winston wisely followed one of Russell Kirk’s most important ideas—that culture, theology, and literature count far more [...]

A Message From Rome

By |2023-10-15T13:40:08-05:00October 15th, 2023|Categories: History, Mark Malvasi, Rome, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Was the fall of Rome suicide or murder? Did the Germanic tribes walk over a corpse or did they contribute to its demise? I. Continuing for more than 200 years, from approximately 27 B.C. to A.D. 180, the Pax Romana was among the most stable, prosperous, and peaceful periods in history—certainly in the history of [...]

How Would Christopher Dawson Redeem the West?

By |2023-10-12T05:16:04-05:00October 11th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christendom, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, St. John Henry Newman, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Christopher Dawson held that the Christian religion created a distinctive culture that not only preceded, but has continued long after, the thirteenth century. It is only by examining this cultural dynamism that one can appreciate why modern society is a mutilated, or a “secularized,” version of Christendom. Soren Kierkegaard observed that a distinguishing mark of [...]

Leviathan, Inc.: Robert Nisbet & the Modern Nation-State

By |2023-09-29T17:48:04-05:00September 29th, 2023|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Nisbet, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization|

Robert Nisbet feared that modern totalitarians had succeeded in undermining the very foundations of goodness, truth, and morality. They had not only redefined liberty as power, but they had transformed the modern political state into a secular church, exchanging real religion for civic religion, creating a “New Leviathan.” Like most Americans during the Great Depression, [...]

On Saint Patrick, Saint Augustine, Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh), & Us

By |2023-09-18T17:26:25-05:00September 18th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Foreign Affairs, Saint Patrick, St. Augustine, Western Civilization|

The West's primary threat still lies in the East. And yet, like the late Romans and Byzantines—and the Roman captives whom Saint Patrick encountered—we are poised to surrender people, churches, monuments, and lands rather than stand our ground. Last Spring, I read a biographical novel about Saint Patrick. We do not have much firsthand information [...]

The Purpose of Peace: Maritain, Augustine & the Battle of Vienna

By |2023-11-04T20:09:09-05:00September 11th, 2023|Categories: Christianity, History, Philosophy, Timeless Essays, War, Western Civilization|

The question of the purpose of peace has troubled humanity from the time an ancient hand was first raised in anger. It is one thing to win a war and impose peace on a vanquished enemy, and altogether another thing to cultivate one’s own victorious city or nation once the wolf has been held at [...]

The Tragedy of Despair

By |2023-09-04T15:36:18-05:00September 5th, 2023|Categories: Evil, Hope, J.R.R. Tolkien, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

My heart breaks for Tolkien's Denethor, whose life ended unnecessarily, as bitterness, anger, and hopelessness in the face of evil consumed him. Let our prayer be that, even as we observe the darkness at the doorstep of Western Civilization, we imaginative conservatives stand at our posts and look to the Heavenly Father as our protector. [...]

“Besieged”: The Saints—the Aristocrats of the Soul

By |2023-09-02T15:34:04-05:00September 2nd, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christianity, Christopher Dawson, History, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization|

The saints have served as the heroes in Western culture, and have been the impetus for renewal in the Western Tradition. God has called them, and they, by responding to His call, have become the aristocrats of the soul. Christopher Dawson, the brilliant Anglo-Welsh Roman Catholic historian of the twentieth century, argued that understanding the [...]

“Besieged”: Sanctifying the Pagan

By |2023-09-02T15:27:19-05:00August 28th, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, History, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

The baptism or sanctification of the pagan reflects the baptism and sanctification of the self. Like the former pagan sites, the Christian person too goes through a process of being lost, baptized, and sanctified. St. Paul, at Mars’ Hill, had helped break the Heraclitian, Platonic, and Stoic cycles of the classical world, by sanctifying the [...]

“Besieged”: Incarnational History

By |2023-09-02T15:31:53-05:00August 22nd, 2023|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Catholicism, Christianity, History, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

From the Roman Catholic perspective, the Logos is the beginning, the middle, and the end of time and history, and history itself is a reflection of the Logos. Each person—from Adam to the last person—is a finite reflection of the Infinite, a bearer of the Image of God, an incarnate soul. In the stunningly poetic [...]

Freedom, Western Tradition, & “The Unbroken Thread”

By |2023-08-18T17:55:59-05:00August 18th, 2023|Categories: Books, Culture, Freedom, Timeless Essays, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Sohrab Ahmari’s book, "The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos," makes the sustained case that too much freedom—or rather, too much of the wrong sort of freedom—can be a kind of slavery. The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos by Sohrab Ahmari (320 [...]

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