For some years now, there has been a genial quarrel between those who use e-readers like Nook and Kindle and those who prefer real books with actual pages. John Senior, if he were alive today, would undoubtedly denounce my Kindle. Dr. Senior was the most prominent of the founders of the Integrated Humanities Program at [...]
I have signed onto a friend of the court brief urging the Washington Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision in the case of State of Washington v. Arlene’s Flowers.* In this case, the court found Mrs. Baronelle Stutzman guilty of unlawful discrimination for declining to design custom floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding. [...]
A Historian and His World: A Life of Christopher Dawson by Christina Scott (N.J and London: Transaction Publishers, 1991) Culture comes from cult. But religious skeptics regularly get it all twisted up. Sometimes they rest their case on the assumption of the very point in question, that diverse cultures just naturally produce diverse religions the same [...]
The ancient rhetoricians, who knew their business, taught that the way to begin a speech, the more so a breakfast talk, was with what they called a captatio benevolentiae, a “capturing of goodwill.” I’ll try that on you—I’ll try to snaffle your benevolence by claiming that we are likely to have this in common: a [...]
For those of us who love Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, and Irving Babbitt, the extravagantly convoluted term, “the moral imagination,” rolls readily off the tongue and warms the heart like few other things. Yet, most of our closest allies on the right scratch their collective and individual heads in confusion. “What is this moral imagination,” [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Jeremy Beer as he explores the philosophy of David Schindler, especially as it concerns love and freedom. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher For the orthodox Christian, is doing one’s public duty more or less reducible to voting for the most socially conservative [...]
“There are no laws, save Want alone,” The mad professor said, “That govern the affairs of men. “So get out of your head “Archaic thoughts of Nature’s Laws. “Reactionary nonsense! “The only constant we confront “Is that there are no constants. […]
Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disc rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining [...]
Critical engagement with Shakespeare’s texts shows beyond any reasonable doubt that his works are interwoven with Catholic references and a Catholic worldview. But does this mean that the Bard was in fact a Roman Catholic? Encyclopedias come in many shapes and sizes. They also come in many stripes and guises. Some should be taken seriously; [...]
One of the most illogical historical debates I’ve ever tried to follow concerns the personal religious conviction of our founding father George Washington. Presently there seem to be two opposing schools of propagandists. They can be divided more or less into Beckites and Obamaites, and both seem obsessed with Washington’s theological leanings. The generally leftist [...]
When I first discovered Plato, I was delighted to learn that philosophy could be exciting, rather than boring. I learned that Plato wrote eloquently in praise of divine madness. Eros is recognized by many to be a form of madness, and yet without eros how can one be propelled aloft on the quest for wisdom? [...]
My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end…. I am glad to think that through all those years we never stopped arguing; and we never once quarreled. These words from G.K. Chesterton’s autobiography have [...]
Since the founding of the Republic, “American Exceptionalism” has been a guiding principle for candidates seeking high office. Next only to a professed belief in God, a firm, if often unfounded, insistence in our benign and beneficent superiority to all other nations and cultures is indispensable for aspiring leaders. From Lincoln’s elegant warning that America [...]
As Edmund Burke continued his ferociously intellectual and spiritual attack on the French Revolutionaries in the earliest and least violent days of the Revolution, he noted critically that no one could ever attain or realize the virtues without struggle. […]