Were the September 11 attacks on America a false flag event orchestrated by the Bush White House? Did they fake the moon landings? Did Bush Senior conspire to kill JFK, or was it LBJ in cahoots with the gangsters? What’s the real story on Area 51? Are the Freemasons behind the plot to create a [...]
Editor’s Note: On September 4, 2014, Boris Johnson gave this lecture at the Legatum Institute, in which he drew parallels between Athens and London and examined how the experiences of democrats in the 5th century B.C. can help to preserve London’s unique metropolitan character today. […]
After his lecture to a packed house recently, Dr. R.R. “Rusty” Reno was answering questions from the audience, when one student asked him about how Wyoming Catholic College students should deal with the misconceptions others have about the liberal arts at Wyoming Catholic. Dr. Reno said he hated to have to tell him, but most [...]
Friendship, or philia, is one of the “loves” that C.S. Lewis elucidates and celebrates in his book, The Four Loves, the others being familial love (storge), sexual love (eros) and Divine love (caritas or agape). Although not the greatest or highest of the loves, Lewis saw friendship as the noble coming together of those who [...]
What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Greek quest for excellence and order and beauty to do with the Hebrew quest for the living God? This is the question the Church Fathers asked themselves, a query that we still must raise from time to time. And in our day in particular, it [...]
In what was, perhaps, Edmund Burke’s best writing, the Anglo-Irish statesman had argued in favor of the moral imagination, a way by which one sees the reflection of God’s glory in another. He then concluded that section of the Reflections on the Revolution in France by noting that “to make us love our country, our [...]
It seems that more people than usual are thinking of sitting out Election Day this year. This is hardly surprising—nor is the sentiment entirely new. Americans are much less likely to vote, as a percentage of the population, than most democratic peoples. This tendency is not without its logic—indeed, an at times compelling logic. But [...]
Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear […]
Under Archbishop Laud (1589–1645) there was a strong move towards greater ceremonial dignity in the church. As the house of God it was to be fitted out accordingly with the finest of human artistry, and its functions were to be conducted in a spirit of deepest reverence. The liturgy, the music, the sacred vessels, the [...]
Few conductors are loved. It could be as well, for music’s sake, that most conductors are loathed. Any impressive level of attendance at their obsequies readily calls to mind the witticism—attributed both to George Jessel and to Red Skelton—regarding the crowds at a universally abhorred Hollywood tycoon’s funeral: “Well, it proves what they always say. [...]
This year marks the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest conflagrations in human history in which more than a million men were killed or wounded. One of the lucky survivors was J.R.R. Tolkien, who described the battle as being an “animal horror.” Bearing the psychological scars of this horror for [...]
Even a Constitution that rational individuals can affirm as a firm protection of their liberty can’t endure without the added support of veneration. The instinctive conservative response is to reject the idea of the living constitution for various and conflicting reasons. One such reason is the conservative recognition that even a free country depends on [...]
For centuries in English-speaking countries, mainstream history and science textbooks have taken it for granted that the Catholic Church was one of greatest single forces that kept the “Dark Ages” dark, by suppressing free inquiry, persecuting innovators, and keeping books out of the hands of ordinary people. As Baylor sociologist Rodney Stark (among others) has [...]
After leaving the ministry of the Church of England I trained as a screenwriter. It is one of the best things I ever did—not because it led to a glittering career in Hollywood, but because I learned about life from a fresh perspective. […]