Over the past few weeks, I’ve written essays on some significant anniversaries that fall in 2016, including the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and the nine-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Now, as this year falls into Fall and prepares to go the same way as all its predecessors, I thought I’d remember another [...]
Despite his own views on the matter of secession, Major Robert Anderson was full of vigor and fight in the immediate aftermath of the move of his troops into Fort Sumter. While President James Buchanan had received the news of Major Robert Anderson’s move to occupy Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Anderson had his own [...]
Alexis de Tocqueville, while traveling through the dense woods in Michigan, in 1831, came across a pioneer and his family, making the “first step toward civilization in the wilds.”[1] He noted in his travel diary that “from time to time along the road one comes to new clearings. As all these settlements are exactly like [...]
“If I don’t win, this will be the greatest waste of time, money and energy in my lifetime,” says Donald Trump. Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Mr. Trump has made history and has forever changed American politics. […]
It is foolish to take sides in disputes, or seek some other place or mode of living, or to envy the future or the past; all desire is delusion. Even life is an uncertain good; death not a certain evil; one should have no prejudices against either of them. Best of all is a calm [...]
In many countries, politicians have very good reason to hold onto power as if their lives depended on it. Sometimes, as with various brutal dictators, this is literally true; being deposed may well mean being decapitated. Other times, well, even elected leaders may have reasons to want to avoid an early return to civilian life. [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Mark C. Henrie, as he explores Russell Kirk’s understanding of the American Constitutional founding. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher In the very first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton claimed that at stake in the process of American constitution-making was a matter of world-historical importance. He [...]
One of my wishes is that those dark trees, So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze, Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom, But stretched away unto the edge of doom. […]
Meg Greenfield, the liberal (1950s style) boss of The Washington Post’s editorial page for the last quarter of the twentieth century, gave the name “The Nixon Generation” to people of her age cohort (born ca. 1928-44). “What distinguishes us as a group,” she wrote, “is that we are too young to remember a time when [...]
A few weeks ago I visited the parish of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas. Former Anglican priest, Fr. Christopher Phillips, has made the parish his life’s mission and has created there a remarkable church and school. One of the first to pioneer “Catholic Anglicanism” (rather than Anglo-Catholicism), Fr. Phillips was ordained [...]
What is true conservatism? That question, more than anything else, is the argument raging in the Republican Party today–one side fully represented in the party’s establishment wing, while the other resides in the hearts of true patriots at the grassroots, those who carry the American Revolution’s sacred fire of liberty. Yet most true conservatives may [...]
“The world exists to end in a book” — Stéphane Mallarmé “Happy is your Grace, That can translate the stubbornness of fortune Into so quiet and so sweet a style.” —Shakespeare, As You Like It (II.i.19-21) “Prayer is reversed thunder.” —George Herbert In Chapter 6 of Understanding Media (1964), “Media as Translators,” Marshall McLuhan starts [...]
The Relative Absoluteness of Truth The first false dichotomy I would like to expose is the one between relativism and absolutism. From this viewpoint, truth is either “absolutely absolute” or “absolutely relative,” with no tertium quid. However, truth is neither of these. If we understand truth as a relationship between what are relative, human beings [...]
At the end of each semester, I inevitably have one or two well-meaning students who are still unsure why they were asked to devote so much time and care to reading, annotating, and discussing archaic Greek literature. They enjoyed reading Homer. They liked our conversations in class, but, at the end of the course, lacking [...]