If this had been a normal year, I might have written a column on summer reading in mid-June, say, with a couple of relatively uneventful months stretching ahead. I might have anticipated which books I wanted to read about the cultural situation we face and the place of strong, traditional, liberal arts education in addressing [...]
For all intents and purposes, Russell Kirk became Russell Kirk the day he realized that there was no need to fear death. Every once in a while, someone online—being either sincere or sincerely mischievous—loves to ask about the status of unrecognized saints. Who is the person most likely to be saint that the church has [...]
Ambassador Young Ambassador Johnny Young. Johnny. Just plain, old Johnny, as Johnny once referred to himself. And that description may be the most remarkable thing about Johnny. He was just plain, old Johnny even when he was a four-time ambassador. His Christian humility seemed to gain luster with each promotion and award. I cannot [...]
The last few days before my grandmother's death, she was mostly unconscious, but we would go over and sit with her and read or pray. Once when I was sitting with her, she suddenly sat up in bed and pointed her extremely long and thin index finger in the air. “My name is in the [...]
On the morning after my arrival in Moscow, I was picked up at the appointed hour by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s eldest son, who drove me to Solzhenitsyn’s home, secluded deep within a wood of towering pine trees. As I stepped out of the car, I felt that I was stepping into the greatest adventure of my [...]
From innumerable living room debates, I see people not only do not know how to argue, but do not care to. Instead they leap to quarrel, so that interruptions, interjections, a raised rate and volume of speech, heightened emotion, the dismissive sneer, and the personal attack become ‘rebuttal.’ The olden days. We professed rhetoric, always [...]
To see and to live is better than to choose; to ride the adventure of faith and hope and love is better than to plot your course to the Fortunate Isles, those illusions. But all things come to them that wait. Into sight silently draws a ship, draped in black silk, with a maiden of [...]
Making judgments is a privilege of persons only. A privilege that is necessary, both to live well on earth and to enter Heaven. There are at least nineteen different kinds of judgment that we should distinguish. I’m sorry I could not find a twentieth, to match the number of digits on our fingers and toes. But [...]
The Battle of Fort Sumter lasted 34 hours, killed no one, and wasted 4,000 Confederate rounds and 1,000 Federal rounds. At that point, it was one of the largest artillery battles ever fought on North American soil. The Confederates loved the glory and honor, as they understood it, when Abner Doubleday fired back, paid to [...]
Learning and teaching are mysterious processes. To understand them fully would mean to discover the secret of our lives. For we are, perhaps above anything else, learning and teaching animals. What I have to speak about, briefly and in a most elementary way, is what both learning and teaching mean and do not mean. Learning [...]
In the name of equality, the exclusively male draft could soon be discarded. Imposing the draft upon all young American women is a logical consequence of a new “woke” armed forces oriented not for war but inclusion and diversity. The American military has always had recourse to the draft in times of emergency. Through this [...]
The late historian M.E. Bradford’s examination of early American history provides us with a framework for understanding the American experience and so gives a standard to clarify our present darkness. His Old Whiggism is a rhetoric of the heart, an appeal to stand in the old ways, to keep alive the spirit of the original [...]
“I never thought it would come to this,” the despondent college professor-turned-Nazi-cooperator cries near the end of the film “Good.” See this movie, which warns of the dangers of the failure to speak up against encroaching evil, but be forewarned that you may see someone you know—or yourself—in the main character. Everyone knows a John [...]
Is Technocracy our God in the modern world? Today, the unthinkable becomes doable, and the doable is unquestioned. Apart from the decision to manufacture the atomic bombs, what about the decision to actually use them on Japan? The struggle to understand why anyone would want to use power to create nothing began for me with [...]