The author of the best book ever written on America, and the best book ever written on democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, claimed to see almost no higher education in America. I think Tocqueville exaggerated a bit in his day, and he would also be exaggerating in ours. […]
A forthcoming book called Lesson Plan throws cold water on the fear that student debt may stunt the lives of college graduates. […]
Its contemplation of evil makes “Mrs. Dalloway” a modern classic that speaks in a universal language and has universal meaning… The British writer, C.E. Montague (1867–1929) poignantly describes this debasing process in an acclaimed book that appeared in 1922, Disenchantment. To read Montague’s text regarding his own personal experiences in the war and how “handsome [...]
Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis: An Intimate Portrait of C.S. Lewis, edited by Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982) A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune of discovering what an unattractive person Joy Davidman, C.S. “Jack” Lewis’s wife, was in real life. She [...]
Vladimir Putin is not a saint and none but a fool would seek to canonize him, but nor is he a tyrant and none but fools should seek to demonize him. In these days of acrimonious political mud-slinging, there seems to be almost nothing upon which the radicals on the left and the reactionaries on [...]
Plato somewhere says, that when grecians war with grecians, (notwithstanding they were separate and independent dynasties) it is not a war, but an insurrection. He would not consider them as a separate people, because they were united in name and by vicinity. And yet the christians will call it a war, and a just and [...]
Many of Flannery O’Connor’s stories portray the ineptness of men to uphold traditional ideals of manhood. The men show no leadership, they do not protect or care for their family members, they lack all manner of chivalry, and they lose a sense of priority as they commit to careers and professions or social and political [...]
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. —The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot I moved frequently in the later years of my childhood—not just from town to town, state to state, or country to country, but from [...]
In order to explain surprising political phenomena like Donald Trump and Brexit, we have to look at the unprecedented impact of new technologies on our total environment. Douglas Rushkoff, the author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, has entertained the thesis that the television age, which brought people together, is over. He opines that [...]
A golfer’s long game has nothing to do with the amount of time it takes to play eighteen holes. It’s the part of his game that has to do with distance shots—what he does with a driver or a 3-iron, for example. In football, the long game is about the passes that get the most [...]
Russell Kirk posed as one of the “canons” of conservatism the existence of orders in society. Critics have responded for decades that such a view shows that traditional conservatives are by nature aristocratic in their orientation, that they are in some sense “un-American” in their rejection of egalitarianism. The assumption appears to be that a [...]
“You know Orion always comes up sideways. Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains, And rising on his hands, he looks in on me Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something I should have done by daylight, and indeed, After the ground is frozen, I should have done Before it froze, and a gust [...]
Among other disasters, Neville Chamberlain is famous for a particularly ill-chosen quotation from Shakespeare. In September 1938, he announced his Munich conference with Hitler, saying, “out of this nettle danger we pluck this flower safety.” He should have read better. These words are Hotspur’s, the battle-eager rebel of Henry IV, Part 1, spoken in defense [...]
I have recently had the mixed blessing of Regnery offering to publish my book, The Mystery of the Magi: The True Identity of the Three Wise Men. I say mixed blessing because it means I have had to face that serious hard work called research. Usually content to tap out inspirational, short essays for online [...]