Might Dante not have been better served had he peopled the Hell of his Divine Comedy with fictional characters of his own invention, instead of actually naming them and therefore damning them?… If one were asked to name the greatest work of literature of all time, there would be only a handful of serious contenders. Both [...]
I'm not much of a long-range planner when it comes to the giving of gifts at Christmas time, I'm a last minute giver. But at least I try to be a thoughtful one. My recommendations in past years have followed a theme. The same is true this year. This time around my list reflects my [...]
A people is constituted by the living who recognize, respect, and identify with their dead in the things and imprints of places that they left behind. The living love their dead by training their young into the social affections that keep their dead alive to them... Edmund Burke’s “eternal society”—the “primeval contract” among the dead, living, [...]
In moral qualities, the character of George Washington is the most truly dignified that was ever presented to the respect and admiration of mankind. Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Washington and the Generals of the American Revolution, by Rufus Wilmot Griswold and William Gilmore Simms (1847). An attentive examination of the whole subject, [...]
It would be nice to have a rational discourse on the problems associated with globalism, and on the extent to which world leaders, such as Mr. Putin or Mr. Trump, are addressing those problems. But liberal media outlets like The New York Times simply demonize these men in an attempt to silence them... The two so-called [...]
If Roe v. Wade should fall, this will only be the beginning of a veritable war by the abortionists on the courts, legislatures, and public. A friend of mine, who enjoys irritating me, recently handed me a book review from the American Historical Review, written by Professor Simone M. Caron, of Johanna Schoen’s Abortion After [...]
The American Founders knew from history that a curriculum successful at teaching its graduates to think, communicate, and lead could produce anarchy or tyranny instead of ordered liberty, unless those skills were practiced by leaders committed to virtue and the love of liberty. The classical education of the American Founders was “Inspired by Liberty and [...]
There is tremendous need for conscious and vigorous action to shape and reshape our behavior in accordance with virtue, the common good, and God’s Law. What could studying grammar have to do with saving our culture..? In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell sounds an almost despairing note: Most people who [...]
Inasmuch as mercy is a human virtue, and the liberal arts are human education, the virtue of mercy is precisely the sort of thing one will explore in a good liberal arts curriculum… I would like to begin by drawing attention to the title of our symposium, “Mercy and the Liberal Arts.” It’s an intuitive [...]
The primary responsibility of the young scholar is to an integrity as person—that is, to a fulfillment of his gifts as this person, limited in gifts but sharing with humanity a nature as intellectual soul incarnate… Polonius: “What do you read, my lord?” Hamlet: “Words, words, words.” At this turning of a millennium it is [...]
"King Lear" reminds us that only a love that cracks our hearts through loss can truly reveal the gift of the Incarnation. When John Henry Cardinal Newman writes about Advent in one of his sermons, he meditates on how this season of expectation falls at the end of the year. “All is past and gone, [...]
Our first national artistic movement, the Hudson River School provided a balm to a public searching for the concrete, the real, and the beautiful in an age of increasing abstraction. It takes its place in the long and glorious Western tradition as a body of art which continues to provide refreshment, enchantment and wonder... “Truly [...]
The humanities can fill us with a kind of reverent admiration for a place in its particularity, and fill us with a delight that such a thing exists, untouched, un-owned by us. It can help us open our grasping hands and let beauty be, whether or not it is possessed by me… I would like [...]
Brewing one's own beer helps the conservative settle back into a habitual patience and a dedication to process and institutions that are assurances of good government in any republic... For the Christmas of 2016, I recommend you get the conservative in your life a homebrewing kit, such as the starter kit available from Northern Brewer. Now, before [...]