Charlie Kirk believed that America’s myths were both truths and facts worth cherishing. The story of America, he insisted, was not original sin without redemption, but sin and redemption together—the kind of story that could inspire loyalty, sacrifice, and renewal. Eventually, he would sacrifice himself for it. England could have been thrown into the cauldron [...]
The ultimate purpose of virtue is to make us capable of friendship, of sacrificing our own good for the good of another, thus nurturing that mutual happiness and trust with another self. We know good families, totally devoted to their children, who’ve been blind-sided by woke “identity politics,” confusing and hijacking their kids. In three [...]
What happened? How did institutions of higher education founded with such clear-eyed Christian missions, centered on moral and academic flourishing, go so far astray? There was once a time when religiously affiliated liberal-arts institutions were just that: havens of the time-honored liberal-arts tradition that sought to shape both students’ minds and hearts in accordance with [...]
Land acknowledgement statements lack factual support: What was the historical nature of the “atrocity” mentioned in the statements? By what “violent and coercive means” was the land stolen? Morally charged language requires painstaking factual research and justification. We are all familiar with the ubiquitous land acknowledgement statement that has become a common feature of political [...]
The whole “woke” agenda has become a delightful farce, warranting not so much bemusement as amusement. Take, for example, the recently announced decision by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to flagellate Shakespeare for his alleged role in promoting “white supremacist imperialism”. The SBT, which manages historical properties in Stratford-upon-Avon, has promised to “decolonize” its museum collections [...]
Dwight Longenecker Father Dwight Longenecker will be no stranger to readers of The Imaginative Conservative. Apart from the numerous essays that he has written for this illustrious journal for more years than I care or dare to remember, he has written many excellent books. As with the essays, so with the books. They [...]
The greatness of the American myth is that it is mostly real. Enough of the faux-conservatives, these woke rightists, judging America as not worth saving and smearing our heroes as tyrants or war criminals. On December 3, 2024, James Lindsay, rightish provocateur, revealed that he had “very lightly edited” “several thousand words straight out of” [...]
The issue of women’s ordination is one comparatively minor aspect of the much larger issue of our times: the destruction and distortion of human sexuality and ultimately the destruction and distortion of the human race itself. The ordination of women in the Church of England was the catalyst for my conversion to the Catholic Church [...]
The reconstructed Globe theater is a masterpiece, a beautiful dream-come-true and a wonderful contribution to the universal Shakespeare industry. If only the productions of the Bard’s plays were as authentic as the theater in which they are performed, instead of being the puerile pastiches that their producers foist upon us. It was a glorious June [...]
The god of sports has long bowed before the god of woke. Everything is allowed to the activists who promote bended knees, pride nights, and alternative national anthems. But, as the left's reaction to Harrison Butker's recent commencement speech shows, nothing is allowed for the God of Hosts. The controversy over Harrison Butker’s fiery commencement [...]
The everyday conversation of a free society depends on trust in our commonsense experience of reality. Contemporary errors about the True, Good, and Beautiful are not simply mistaken explanations. They are lies, distorting and misrepresenting the experiences themselves, and cannot explain our real experience of Transcendence. Many parents are discovering that there is something seriously [...]
The liturgical imagery of the priest connects directly to our concepts and language about God. It does so because our concepts and language about God are necessarily personal. We are called to be in a person to person relationship with God—a relationship of intentional love, and as human beings we can only relate personally through [...]
Stanford University IT department’s “Elimination of Harmful Words Initiative” document was released recently, with its list of harmful words, suggested alternatives, and explanations for why the forbidden words are so bad. But what is truly harmful is giving fools and knaves the power to tell us how to talk when there is no real moral [...]
The innocent child instinctively and implicitly knows what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Like the innocent child denouncing the emperor’s “new clothes,” he recognizes the drag queen as ugly and sinister as a wicked witch in a fairy tale. The child does not bend to the politically- correct opinions and says what he [...]