If federal spending on wealthy institutions of higher learning can’t be trimmed, where could it be trimmed? If any belt-tightening is impossible for these universities, where in the budget would it be possible? Let’s presume for so the moment we can’t keep running up huge budget deficits and continuing to increase the public debt, which [...]
Many conservatives have assumed that Edmund Burke was opposed to the American Revolution. It is, to my mind, an erroneous assumption. “Burke broke his agentship and went publicly silent on the American cause once war broke out,” Robert Nisbet claimed in his most definitive analysis of Edmund Burke, written and published in 1985. His fellow [...]
Between the potency and the existence… falls the Shadow. These words of T. S. Eliot always come to mind whenever I find myself reading works in translation. The sad fact is that the pure potency of the original work in its original language is lost in its translation to another tongue. And yet, for those [...]
In "Pride and Prejudice," Elizabeth Bennet is vehement that the character of the person must be determined in order to make a good choice. While spouses may change over time in superficial ways, the essentials remain constant. While one may hope for the conversion of a scoundrel or a fool, it is not worth banking [...]
The Sacred Heart of Jesus should not only glow with the divine love, but kindle with that same influence all that comes within its reach? The fire he came to send on the earth was none other than the fire of love which penetrated and informed his own sacred humanity. I am come to cast [...]
Andrew C. Johnston’s “The Sons of Remus” provides a window into not only how European identities were formed, but how all societies engage in a constant process of negotiation and renegotiation in determining who they are, where they came from, and where they are going. The Sons of Remus: Identity in Roman Gaul and Spain, by [...]
Hilaire Belloc’s “The Contrast” is a neglected study of America and Europe after the Great War. His sadness over the utter failure of Europeans to embrace their cultural patrimony and stand independently explains his later sympathy for Franco and Salazar, and his initial interest in Mussolini. The unimaginative always place a wall of separation between [...]
In the Gospel, we see neither the dominance of man over beast nor worship of the awesome ocean swell. Rather, nature moves these fishermen to something greater—Jesus Christ, the power of God, the wisdom of God, the author of all nature. There’s nothing like a good fish tale. Man grappling with nature. The allure of [...]
In the wake of Hamas' attack on Israel, Douglas Murray asks broad questions: “What can Western liberal societies do in the face of such movements? What can people who value life do in the face of those who worship death.” On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization, by Douglas Murray (209 [...]
Irving Babbitt wrestled with those fundamental life questions that relate to the fate of man in the modern world. What he chose to say about this world of increasing material organization continues to make Babbitt’s work and thought disturbing and unpalatable. Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) never wavered in what he viewed as being his commanding office [...]
Saying that government cannot educate is not a partisan political position, but a simple statement of fact: government cannot educate, because government cannot love. Even more bluntly, government should not even try to run institutions of love, because, slowly but surely, its administrators inevitably pervert them in their desire for security or lust for power. [...]
What will God, whose chief instrument is often irony, choose as His weapon to pull Augustine back from the brink? A book by Cicero. To Carthage then I came Burning burning burning burning O Lord Thou pluckest me out O Lord Thou pluckest burning… (T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land) Eliot’s allusion, among countless others strewn about [...]
All play is an attempt to approximate to the Creator, who performs his work with the divine seriousness which its meaning and purpose demand, and yet with the spontaneity and effortless skill of the great artist he is, creating because he wills to create and not because he must. Man, according to Plotinus, is a [...]
It is above all Saint Bernard, particularly through his innovative mystical theology, who shaped the theology of the later Middle Ages and also of modern times. The history of Christian spirituality is rather like a roller coaster with continual ups and downs, as renewal is followed by decline as the human spirit inevitably falters and [...]