In “Liberty, the God That Failed,” Christopher Ferrara asks us to open our eyes to harsh realities, but also to the possibilities for a rightly-ordered society and the true liberty that can still be ours. To read this book is never to think about the modern West and American history in the same way again. [...]
Many American readers will know of BBC Radio 3, Britain’s leading radio network for classical music and the arts. Certainly, in recent years, many U.S. artists have created an immense reputation in Britain: Leonard Slatkin, for example, with his chief conductorship of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Marin Alsop of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra becoming [...]
For years, my grandfather shared his garden with a rare gray fox. As he piddled about, the fox watched from the wood’s edge, in enfleshed silence, following every slow movement […]
Clocks and spirals and quotations in forgotten alphabets whirl through animated outer space until a door appears. The eerie old theme music fades to Russell Kirk’s voice: “You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension—a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving out [...]
I recently attended a conference in Claremont on Strauss and Burke–or what Strauss says about Edmund Burke to close Natural Right and History. For anyone who really checks out what he says there, it’s the strangest part of a strange book. Here are some obvious points that might turn out to be wrong: Burke is an [...]
In June of 1979, the recently elected pope, John Paul II, passed through the Iron Curtain, to his homeland of Poland. Over the course of nine days, the world witnessed a profound display of distinctly Christian rhetoric that ignited the moral imaginations of a people bound under the yoke of communism and atheistic materialism, sparking [...]
When I first read “Against Mumford” by Matthew Schmitz at First Thoughts, I wondered if we had listened to the same songs. Schmitz’s review of English folk-rock band Mumford and Sons’s second album “Babel” applauds the negativity of critics and belittles the praise of fans. His snarky critiques are unjust and lack an appreciation for [...]
In his conversations with the journalist Bill Moyers, the mythologist Joseph Campbell commented on the power of lived symbolism in communal life. When the judge comes out in a black robe, sits behind a high desk and calls the court to order with a gavel he is no longer an ordinary man. He is the [...]
Think about the men of Lexington or the members of the First Continental Congress. Did they deliberate, did they shed blood, did they sacrifice so that our government—the first major republic in almost 2,000 years—could devolve in the same fashion, only much faster, than the last major republic? Rebellion is not necessarily secessionist in the [...]
Sherlock Holmes was born (in all probability) on January 6th, 1854—160 years ago today. In answering how this date was discovered out of the secret of Mr. Holmes’ past, the temptation may arise to proclaim, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Regard, however, for the Canon—the sixty public records of Mr. Holmes’ remarkable career—repudiates common errors. Nowhere [...]
On s’est trompé lorsqu’on a cru que l’esprit et le jugement étaient deux choses différentes: le jugement n’est que la grandeur de la lumière de l’esprit; cette lumière pénètre le fond des choses, elle y remarque tout ce qui’il faut remarquer, et aperçoit celles qui semblent imperceptibles… We are deceived if we think that mind [...]
As we look at our present nihilistic culture, malnourished in the absence of fides et ratio[1] and living only on a meager diet of panem et circenses,[2] it is hard to perceive any sign of true progress, unless we see progress as synonymous with suicide. Whether the homicide, genocide, and infanticide of secular fundamentalism can be seen as its [...]
Chapter 4 in The Young Man’s Guide to Building a House “And the two shall become one flesh.” You don’t hear that much anymore, and when you do it is written off as poetry. With the low regard for poetry these days that pretty much relegates it to something fit for a greeting card. When I [...]
Sometimes you just have to laugh. What delighted presstitutes call “atheist mega-churches” have crossed the pond from Britain to America. “What would happen if they set up a ‘godless congregation’ that met to celebrate life, with no hope of the hereafter?” asks the UK’s relentlessly Progressive Guardian newspaper. Fasten your seatbelts, but don’t expect much turbulence. [...]