We have all been repeatedly warned against toxic masculinity in church leaders. But in "It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity," authors Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tennant warn us against a toxic femininity that has browbeaten men into being ashamed of their masculinity and embracing androgyny. It’s Good to Be [...]
The good life for "Stan" Evans was the simple life. A populist conservative, he both preached the virtues of the common man and lived the life of the common man—and all with the benefit of an uncommonly fine mind. M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom, by Steven F. Hayward (391 New York: Encounter [...]
The sacramental imagination must not be an exercise in the imaginary. It must traffic in images of reality that include the startlingly beautiful, the ugly, and the outwardly disagreeable but inwardly luminous. Writing in the early 1840s, the then-Anglican John Henry Newman proposed to a friend that a good article could be written with the [...]
Citizens are free when they see and respect their dependence on each other. They can best continue to do what they know to be the right thing if they are committed to political self-rule. Ukraine’s spirited defense of itself is a shining example of this kind of freedom. Ukrainian defiance has shaken many people across [...]
Many so-called conservatives are buying into the progressive presumption that things are progressing inexorably in one direction, which the progressives think is a liberated future and which conservatives think is a libertine hell. Such conservatives agree with the progressive perspective; they just don’t like it! It is odd that those who consider themselves “progressives” assign [...]
In a democratic age, how can greatness come to be? Edmund Burke offers a way forward: prudence as a form of excellence. Our conference is subtitled “equality and the survival of heroism.” My concern is the survival of prudence amid the longing for heroism—in particular, the misalignment between ambition and circumstance, the persistent pursuit of [...]
Victor Davis Hanson links the long history of progressive dominance with the gradual “dying” of American citizenship. Is he wrong to do so? Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America (419 pages, New York: Basic Books, 2021) Here and there Victor Davis Hanson tries [...]
American mythologist Joseph Campbell’s discernment of the hero’s quest and his distillation of world myth into an easily-digestible template has had a powerful impact on contemporary culture, including influencing George Lucas' "Star Wars" films. The mythologist Joseph Campbell was the grandson of an Irish peasant-immigrant. Brought up in a Catholic home in New York, he [...]
The “liberal” in “liberal arts” has traditionally and rightly been understood to refer to freedom in several ways. In a classical context the liberal arts rescue us from banal pursuits. In a religious context they deliver us from earthly bonds. And in a modern context they set us free from inherited prejudices. Editor’s Note: This [...]
One of the greatest adventure stories in exploration history was a dismal failure. The ill-fated voyage of the ship Endurance never reached its destination. However, the story of its heroic captain, Sir Ernest Shackleton, survives as a stirring inspiration for all time. The 1914 expedition sought to be the first to cross Antarctica. It failed [...]
They toil not, neither do they spin Mathew 6:28 They toil not, neither Do they spin, these soulful sprites— These sweet birds of song. They toil not, neither Do they spin, these brave songsters— These faithful soldiers. Like wraiths in the day, Hiding among trembling leaves, They whisper like wind. They sing in shadows, Beneath [...]
In "The Marble Faun," we sense Nathaniel Hawthorne, descendent of Puritans, coming to terms with what some call the “Catholic Thing,” transcending the assumptions of his own culture and society in an open-minded reflection on history and art. Nathaniel Hawthorne classed The Marble Faun, his last novel, among his “romances,” works of fiction blending fantasy [...]
Many conflicting and some untrue stories have been printed about General George S. Patton and the Third Army Prayer. Some have had the tinge of blasphemy and disrespect for the Deity. Even in "War As I Knew It" by General Patton, the footnote on the Prayer by Colonel Paul D. Harkins, Patton's Deputy Chief of [...]
In our own days, characterized by a narcissistic daze, the lessons that Romeo and Juliet teaches about “violent delights” and their “violent ends” are as relevant as ever. A few days ago, I gave a talk on Romeo and Juliet to a high school freshman class, after which I endeavoured to answer the many great [...]