Plutarch’s writing combines the comfortable, gossipy moralizing of Livy with the precise rhetorical calibration of Tacitus, and the result sparks with human insight unmatched by any other writer of the ancient world except the Greek tragedians… Bard College classicist James Romm, author of memorably good books such as Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court [...]
Greek mythology and Norse mythology can teach us much about what it means to be human; what they cannot do, however, is provide ultimate hope. For that, we need a truer story… This semester I heard the voice of the “Helikonian Muses” as they sang “the song again in our time” through Hesiod’s Theogony.[1] I [...]
Responsible rhetoric is a rhetoric responsible primarily to the truth. It measures the degree of validity in a statement, and it is aware of the sources of controlling that it employs… Editorial Note: The text of “A Responsible Rhetoric” is taken from a transcription of a tape recording of a speech Richard M. Weaver delivered [...]
"The Christian religion, then, teaches men these two truths; that there is a God whom men can know, and that there is a corruption in their nature which renders them unworthy of Him. It is equally important to men to know both these points; and it is equally dangerous for man to know God without [...]
It might be too early to say, but the present recoil from fake news might prove that we are not quite ready to abandon the values we once thought so completely debunked. Truth might still stand a chance… Over the last few months, a number of publications have been running articles about what may be [...]
Liberal arts, taught correctly, are essential in a liberal democratic republic. A liberal arts education can prepare citizens for life in a republic that cherishes its liberty. This June, I spent a week reading and listening to many conversations about Homer’s Iliad at St. John’s College, Annapolis. The rules of a Summer Classics Seminar are simple, explained [...]
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, If worth in me or ought I do appear, Who can of right better demand the same Than may your worthy self from whom it came? The principal might yield a greater sum, Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; My stock's so small I know not [...]
The answer to the healthcare conundrum is not be found in Congress or in the White House, or in any draconian centre of usurped power; it is to be found on our own doorstep, in our own homes and in the homes of our neighbors… Healthcare is a problem, and not apparently a merely sociopolitical [...]
In their drive to provide abundance, mass markets suppress variety. Far from enriching a culture, mass markets can impoverish it… One of the benefits of modern mass markets is supposed to be the proliferation of choices. The modern consumer can choose from so many things available on a variety of platforms, be it off or [...]
Igor Stravinsky was not only one of the greatest composers and minds of the twentieth century, but also one of the last Christian humanists in the world of art. “Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church in all its decoration; it is the church’s [...]
The philosophy of the liberal arts says that education should train the mind to think. But today teachers are being forced to serve two masters: the old master of good curricula and the new master of standardized testing… In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis writes, “What do they teach them at [...]
We can only hope that our current president will not now, in his efforts to make the world safe from terrorism, instead make the world safe for Wahhabism, the last remaining totalitarianism of our time... There have been more than a dozen Islamic terrorist attacks perpetrated in the United States. They mostly fall within the [...]
The future is bright for conservatives. If conservatism is understood as somehow a post-modern phenomenon, we will no longer labor under the tiresome accusation that we are on the wrong side of history and therefore irrelevant… In the late 1970s, if you had asked someone what a conservative was, the answer would have been easy. [...]
“The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement. Several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired or strengthened by it, so as to become habits, ready on all occasions.” I have a bit of a confession to make. I have never played chess [...]