E.D. Hirsch (the cultural literacy guy) has, I think, written the most important article on educational "outcomes" in a long time. The great benefit of education, "the key to increasingly upward mobility," is expanding the vocabulary of students. Why is that? Hirsch observes that "vocabulary size is a convenient proxy for a whole range of [...]
Russell Kirk In the paragraphs below, from A Program for Conservatives, Dr. Russell Kirk addresses conservatives with words which remind us of our pilgrim status in this world of tears. We are not called to material success. We are called to obedience. We are called to love. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful will find their true [...]
What better word might explain America in 1861 than that of word Homer used to begin The Iliad: Rage. But, rage for or against what? And, with what consequences? A century and a half later, we must recognize the whole period as rich with potential, rich with glory and . . . ripe for corruption. Noble [...]
Christopher Dawson Christopher Dawson wrote with two different audiences in mind. He sought both to displace the bankrupt Victorian and Edwardian liberalism of his own day and to shake the complacency of his coreligionists who preferred to bask in the quickly fading light of false medievalism. His carefully crafted prose revealed a nuanced and original understanding [...]
How should a conservative interact with popular culture? We live in a time when popular music mocks religion, prime time television depicts homosexual relations and multi-generational groupings as “the new normal,” films depict literal orgies of gory sadism, and all promote narcissistic nihilism with a snarky self-confidence expressed in gutter language. How should we respond [...]
In recent years a heated debate has erupted about American foreign policy and about what moral purpose should inform our conduct of international relations. While analysts Robert Kagan, Michael Mandelbaum, and Stephen Schwartz insist the United States should use its power, where possible, on behalf of “democracy,” other commentators have rejected this approach. James Kurth, [...]
Mozart, Wolfgang (Austrian, 1756–91). No, not “Amadeus”; his baptismal certificate reads “Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart,” “Amadé” (the form of his middle name that Mozart himself preferred to use) being Theophilus’s Gallicized version. In fact, almost everything else Hollywood told you about him is wrong, except his child prodigy status, which even Hollywood could hardly [...]
In spite of all appearances to the contrary, the film “The War of the Vendée” shows us that to see things through the childlike eyes of Chesterton, or Frodo, or the people of the Vendée is to see them as they really are. If a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing badly… [...]
The agency driving the threefold development of the Oresteia is human effort in partnership with divine purpose. The Athena of the third play provides the executive, personal agent who, in founding a polity, gives over divine to human providence. The great question provoked by the trilogy is the question of assigning ultimate causality, since from [...]
Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives, edited by John A. Murley and John E. Alvis; foreword by William F. Buckley, Jr., 2002. Willmoore Kendall (1909-1967) remains one of the most important figures in mid-twentieth century conservatism. His penetrating scholarship on Locke, his writings on the internal tensions inherent in majority rule, his early involvement with [...]
Excerpts from The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Catechism, by John Zmirak Q: Okay, so we’ve worked our way through the uncounted millennia between the emergence of man and the first glimmers of revelation, then the six-thousand-something years it took God to gradually tease out what he had in mind for mankind. On the face [...]
Your Eminence, I pray that this finds you well. You may recall that when we met at the cathedral before I left to visit America, you asked that I write to Your Eminence through my beloved elder brother, Fr. Adebayo Francis, with occasional observations. The Lord has blessed me with a safe journey and this [...]
Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts by Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner. These are dark days for American law. In June, Chief Justice John Roberts, in what was a stark betrayal of his oath to uphold the Constitution, upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “ACA” or “Obamacare”) as a valid [...]
Shackled to deadlines or deep in the stacks, The patron of editors, writers and hacks, And all the good work that their labour entails, Is the Genovese bishop, Saint Francis de Sales. Convivial, mystical, pious and skint, God’s love was the liquor he poured into print; In the Great Reformation he did rather much (While [...]