Throughout "History in English Words," Owen Barfield discusses the influences of every possible cultural encounter on the English language. Language, he demonstrates, never stops in its evolution, moving from one point, one thought, one epoch to another, always shifting, always changing, but also always honoring. An extraordinary man by any measure, Owen Barfield (1898-1997), one [...]
Seeing himself and his allies on the losing side of the war against the modern spirit, Irving Babbitt made a fierce call to arms, advocating the need for a “remnant” to preserve all that is good, true, and beautiful. Irving Babbitt In his own day and age, Irving Babbitt’s (1865-1933) many opponents—from Ernest [...]
Teaching at a time when civilization is in such obvious disarray and such marked decline imposes even more stringent and pressing obligations on the teacher. I have reached the conclusion that what American teachers must do is really very basic: Teach young men and women how to read and write, how to imagine beyond themselves, [...]
When Winston Elliott and I first started talking about what a proper online conservative journal might look like, way back in the spring and summer of 2010, we decided on a few things. Most importantly, we wanted real diversity of opinion, not the parroting of some ideological drudgeries. As such, we wanted all schools of [...]
“What have the Romans ever done for us?” A famous Monty Python sketch begins with this question. Let’s rephrase it in the Age of Woke: What has Western civilization ever done for us? And let’s allow the woke spokesperson to respond. “What have the Romans ever done for us?” Those of my generation will probably [...]
The West above all developed the capacity for self-reflection and self-criticism, acknowledging that what is, if wicked or decrepit, can be changed or replaced, and that what is not, however improbable or preposterous, can be brought into being. This recognition filled the world with a host of new possibilities. To many in the United States [...]
Might the “big R” Reformation of the sixteenth century and the “big R” Revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth owe something to the first great revolution that made Old Europe in the first place? It has been noted that historians are creatures professionally invested in change. We should therefore suspect them when they speak of [...]
C.S. Lewis wrote prophetically about the Abolition of Man. We are witnessing its literal fulfillment. If history unfolds in 500-year epochs, then we are on the cusp of a new epoch. What does it hold for humanity? I have not been the only one to recognize that the last five hundred years have been an [...]
Belief in the objective existence of the world outside ourselves, the world to which we submit our thought, is our deepest inheritance. Last Thursday, Bishop Steven Biegler of the Diocese of Cheyenne came to Wyoming Catholic College to bless our new Immaculate Conception Oratory—“new,” at least, in our use of it. As I have mentioned [...]
To assess accurately the state of Western Civilization, one needs to understand how the Western tradition, standing at the peak of its influence and popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, ended up in such a state of siege a century later. The reports of the death of Western Civilization are neither premature nor [...]
As we ponder the meaning of history and ethics, we must ask: How do we reach unity without conformity? What should be conserved? And exactly what is freedom for? Our beginnings are quite noble and quite heroic. When the Persian god kings looked at the decentralized, myriad Greek City States, they were filled with pride [...]
Children of the Sunset Lands, Living in the distant marches of the West, In the innocence of youthful ignorance They worshipped the gods and goddesses, Pouring wine upon the ground for mighty Zeus And dancing round Odin’s sacred oak, Delighting the demons who hid behind those rites. […]
Owen Barfield argued that the modern world must readopt the truths of the Logos, should Western Civilization move beyond its current selfish and totalitarian phase. And this rediscovered love of the Logos must express itself throughout culture and the arts. In 1944, over a decade after Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, half a decade after Tolkien’s [...]
Russell Kirk gave voice to a myriad of persons, personalities, and ideas circulating in the decade after the Second World War, just as the West was trying to understand what it stood for, rather than what it stood against. The latter was easy. Communism and fascism were evil. But, what exactly did the West stand [...]