Jean Sibelius wrote In Memoriam (Op. 59), in memory of Eugen Schauman, a Finnish nationalist who assassinated the Russian Governor-General of the Duchy of Finland, in a bid to further Finnish independence. The work is a funeral march for orchestra. Sibelius composed a first version in 1909 and completed a final version in 1910 (both [...]
The recovery of political theory is necessary for American political life, for without it, our love of our country may be on unstable grounds. There is nothing more natural, wholesome, and genuinely conservative than to love those places we are from, even with—and perhaps especially because of—all their imperfections… Conserving America? Essays on Present Discontents by [...]
Any intelligent, substantive response to the Alt-Right must come from those who themselves stand cheerfully outside the bounds of respectable establishment discourse… Alain de Benoist Well before Hillary Clinton put a national spotlight on the Alt-Right with her “deplorables” speech, I was addressing the then-obscure movement and what it signifies for modern society. [...]
Rather gruff and rumpled-looking, Peter Lawler was absolutely and always his own man. Not from an elite or Ivy League background, Peter nevertheless could have, and often did, run complete circles around his intellectual opponents, many of whom thought themselves superior. An American original and an anti-individualist individual, he was the very personification of a healthy [...]
The beautiful sadness of the classical movement in architecture can be a message, urging all people of the third millennium to retrieve what was lost at the end of the second: the human need for transcendent meaning beyond history… What is the meaning of what we now generally refer to as the “New Classicism” or [...]
The Roman Road is nothing less than the royal road of all adult historical consciousness. That road is the way of the imaginative conservative, who does not throw away the all-connecting vision of childhood, and then replace it with another, “more sophisticated” way of thinking. Thomas Hardy’s mother died in 1904 at the age of [...]
Now the bright morning Star, Day’s harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The Flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose. […]
The peculiar conditions of our time and our society demand now, more than ever before, a reinvigoration of truly liberal learning. This hour is favorable to the restoration or establishment of a college with principle… A few years ago, a graduate of New York University brought suit against that institution. He had been induced to enter [...]
The empirical sciences are fantastic for discovering many things, but intellectual and moral truths are not among them. We must turn instead to the principles of philosophy and ethics, deduced from the objective moral standard of truth, to discover the answer to the questions about how we ought to live… The modern world is steeped [...]
For William Faulkner, the American Dream lay in the promise of true community, where manners and customs regulate behavior. In a mere society, man’s actions are constrained only by brute force (either public or private) or by the fear of force. On the Prejudices, Predilections, and Firm Beliefs of William Faulkner by Cleanth Brooks (Louisiana State [...]
How does a human soul cope with the horror of war? Is there room for hope? And what of the Spirit of Death, ever present in times of war and peace? Can Death itself be changed?… Siegfried Sassoon: After the nightmare horror of the Somme, a firing squad would be nothing to fear. And yet, [...]
Without defending the citadel of the mind, how can we build a beautiful city? Without the conviction of true propositions, whence do we think beauty will come?… In Conversations with Roger Scruton (2016), Mark Dooley engages in a fascinating book-length interview with the famous English philosopher. While best known academically for unfashionable arguments on behalf [...]
The speculations of classic and scholastic metaphysics are edifices of reason erected on the experiential basis of existence in truth. We cannot withdraw into these edifices and let the world go by, for in that case we would be remiss in our duty of “debate”… In our capacity as political scientists, historians, or philosophers we [...]
The theme of C.R. Wiley’s “Man of the House” is that the Great Progressive Fallacy—the individual is the moral center of the culture, and that the state is the individual’s protector—serves only the forces of destruction… Man of the House: A Handbook for Building a Shelter that will Last in a World that is Falling [...]