Russell Kirk wrote of the Constitution often, singing its praises as coming directly from the experience of a people. It was not written for any other, as it came into existence in a specific time and a specific place. To Kirk, the Constitution was a practical document, not an ideological or abstract one. Throughout his [...]
Those of us in the contemporary world imagine that we are too busy to indulge in free time. Leisure and contemplation might have worked in past ages with their sleepy, bucolic landscapes and colorful peasants, but it won’t work in ours. But God commanded us, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” almost as [...]
Battered and barren, slammed against cast iron sky, Ignored and forgotten, Their dazzling leaves now a distant sorrow. Still beautiful. In a December fast fading. She walks, head bowed and listing, Uprooted, Upright nevermore. But still beautiful. This December dying fast. Crippling thoughts Fracturing time, Slammed against winter facts, I whimper. I fall. The year ending and no new beginning. The Imaginative Conservative applies [...]
John Cassian's rules for discernment can assist in the problematic process of sifting out false religious teaching and teachers, false ideologies and ideologues, specious political opinions and bogus salesmen, rogues and internet provocateurs. John Cassian, born in the mid-fourth century in what is present-day Romania, exerted a major influence on Western monasticism and therefore on [...]
Evil has not changed its nature, just its face. When the dead of Ukraine are counted and we are asked where they are, will America, will we, reply “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Dr. Brad Birzer's recent essay, The Ukraine Crisis: Is It Time to Debate War?, asks many pertinent questions. He encourages Americans to engage [...]
When liberal education is forgotten, we grope our way into that antagonist world—if you will, from space to anti-space, into Milton’s “hollow dark.” Our term “liberal education” is far older than the use of the word “liberal” as a term of politics. What we now call “liberal studies” go back to classical times; while political [...]
Our interest is to avoid being a pawn sacrificed in someone else’s war. In this war we have nothing to gain and everything to lose. We must stay out of this war! Not a single Hungarian must be caught between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian sledgehammer. This is an excerpt of a speech given [...]
Christ assumed the whole of humanity in his assumption of the individual human nature received from and through his mother Mary. Politics is about the final end of human existence, and so politics has an essential relation to the Christian claim. The claim cannot be avoided; it can only be affirmed or denied. When thinking [...]
In the light or shadow of the current conflict in the Ukraine, it would seem appropriate to remind ourselves of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s relationship with Vladimir Putin. This will enable a deeper understanding of the background to the conflict, especially if the following is read in conjunction with Solzhenitsyn’s prophetic understanding of the underlying reasons for [...]
Why exactly did Thomas Jefferson and Congress change John Locke’s famous declaration in favor of life, liberty, and property, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Some, wrongly, have believed this to be a Jeffersonian attack on the notion of property. But, as Forrest and Ellen McDonald assure us in their own profound writings [...]
We need to restore moral value to leadership. In whom do we now recognize and salute leaderly qualities? Who are representative of great leadership? What accounts for the growing diminution of standards of leadership? “In the long run democracy will be judged,” writes Irving Babbitt in Democracy and Leadership (1924), “no less than other forms [...]
With so much buying happening online or through self-service kiosks, the art of shopping has lost much of its attraction. Some market-savvy executives have noticed this shortcoming and have recently introduced slow checkouts, which turn the routine chore into a meaningful experience. With so much buying happening online or through self-service kiosks, the art of [...]
"The Chosen" addresses and transfigures the duality we love in our popular mythology: a man who is also God. Repeatedly, it raises questions about how we imagine the humanity of Jesus. What was it like when Peter and Andrew pulled in that massive haul of fish after catching nothing all night? How do you picture [...]
There is a real sense of the elven magic and Arthurian romance in John William Waterhouse’s painting, "The Lady of Shallot," which unites it aesthetically with Tennyson’s poem. It is other-worldly, suggestive of other-worlds beyond the merely mundane. It takes us out of ourselves to a realm beyond the confines of the ego. Such is [...]