In A Traveler From Altruria, William Dean Howells reminded Americans that if they continued to justify their egoism and selfishness at the expense of the common good, all that had profited them in this world would have been purchased at the cost of their souls Dismissed as an apologist for the manners and morals of [...]
Poetry is able to grant the reader the ability to perceive that reality, in spite of its often chaotic and random appearance, has some underlying unity by which it is bound together. This insight, in turn, provides the terms by which one may make peace with the world... A 2012 survey found that only 6.7% [...]
Edmund Burke transcends party struggles and the questions of his hour; and, though suspicious from first to last of abstract doctrine and theoretic dogma, he will endure not for what he did, but for what he perceived. Burke and the Nature of Politics: The Age of the French Revolution by Carl B. Cone (527 pages, University [...]
Having grown up in the capital of the Confederacy in a family riddled with unreconstructed rebels, I was always sensitive to these imputations of inferiority directed at the South and Southerners: my section and my people. Although I felt in my heart that something must be wrong, that we could not have been that bad, [...]
An attendance requirement isn’t just about showing up; it requires attending to what is placed before us with proper focus. We need to be present, to focus on what God calls us to, and to pay attention to those around us… It’s that time of the year when professors like me spell out our classroom [...]
One-sixth of all men of prime working age in America are not just unemployed, but have stopped looking for jobs altogether. Why?… The US stock market continues to set new records. Unemployment continues to go down. The United States is now at or near “full employment.” According to a Bloomberg headline last year, “The Jobless [...]
Christopher Dawson stood as an antagonist against the conformity of progressive and professional history, and he rightly noted that such history negates not just personality but the very essence of creativity itself… While the domestic violence (criminals, cops, mobs) of this summer pales in comparison to the outrageous behaviors of the previous one, our season [...]
Machismo is the failure to grow into the fullness of what it means to be a man. The mark of machismo is the boast and braggadocio of the braggart. It is the mask of pride, worn by those who lack humility… Once upon a time, when I was a boy, I recall watching a Western [...]
The war between France and Great Britain was the first major crisis faced by the country under the new Constitution. It was a test that the Washington Administration helped the nation pass with flying colors. The following essay is an examination of the Washington administration’s handling of the first major foreign policy crisis facing the [...]
Great is the sun, and wide he goes Through empty heaven with repose; And in the blue and glowing days More thick than rain he showers his rays. […]
In one, horrible way there really was no difference between those on the Right and those on the Left who sought to provoke violence in Charlottesville: Their consciences were clear, and they believed that violence was justified... Conflict comes in all sizes and flavors. Some are huge like wars between countries and some are very [...]
To see Paul Cezanne only as a seed of Modern art is to misunderstand the magnitude of his accomplishment… Paul Cézanne For nearly a century, we have seen Paul Cezanne through the eyes of his disciples. They have given us the popular and concretized version of who the painter was. A version to [...]
As I watched a crowd of militant Leftists in Durham, North Carolina this week pull down a statue of a Confederate soldier, I was left not only angry but befuddled by the ignorance of it all: the vitriol of the mob focused on this seemingly inoffensive monument depicting a common soldier, seemingly war-weary and tired, [...]
My first conversation with Stephen Tonsor occurred on a mid-April morning in 1987. Already we were talking about a great nineteenth-century historian, the first principles of a European Liberal, and what it all meant to an American conservative… My first conversation with Stephen Tonsor occurred on a mid-April morning in 1987. I was living in [...]