Christmas Spirit aside, there is (guilty) pleasure in offending the Enemies of The Permanent Things. Raise their blood-pressure by giving our kindred souls—or sporting yourself—a monocle, gray spats, a natty walking stick or a pocket-watch and chain. If that’s too daunting, start with a paisley cravat. Imaginative Conservative ladies may irritate the neo-barbarians by going to and from church or [...]
Here’s a sign that we see in front lawns all across Rome/Floyd County, GA: “Christmas is a Birthday!” And it is! Well, everyone knows that Jesus wasn’t really born on December 25. But there’s no particular reason that birthdays have to be exact. We’re not remembering the date, we’re remembering something unique, irreplaceable, something most [...]
F.A .Hayek Following the Second World War, Hayek tried in vain to warn Western capitalists that they had set themselves on the “road to serfdom” at the very moment when the West stood on the threshold of unprecedented economic affluence, which would have been impossible without the intervention of government. At the turn [...]
Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. [...]
When we survey that last 100 years in even the most cursory manner possible, the one objective and rather obvious thing that holds the century together is both the attempt to deconstruct the human person and the counter effort to uphold his dignity. Contempt and defense, seemingly in a Manichaen-like struggle. While the Gulags, the [...]
There is a cartoon that has, as they say, “gone viral” on the internet in the last two weeks or so. It’s one of the oldest threads from the Schultz empire, and one never tires of its utterly predictable and utterly funny ending. Lucy the capitalist progressive always wins, and Charlie Brown never learns. Here [...]
That “friend” is now so widely verbified Online (I friended someone new just now) Calls friendship into some degree of question Does it not? Perhaps “that ship has sailed”? And does this not imply a shipping charge If ship is also verb instead of noun? But even online friends who seem asea There being a [...]
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Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, by Sylvia Nasar, Simon & Schuster, 558 pages In December 1974, in the midst of the first energy crisis, Friedrich Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Sweden and confessed, “we have little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.” He admitted that [...]
Among the many dangers for traditional conservatives, and Catholics in particular, as the culture becomes increasingly hostile to us and our way of life, is the view that we always must defend “our” people when they come under criticism—and of course never criticize them ourselves. Such has been especially the case with pizza magnate Tom [...]
My wife is a librarian and daily interacts with children and books. If I were not a Professor, I cannot think of a more appealing calling. We talk daily about the little ones in her school, books, and the relationship between bookish children and their overall demeanor. A picture book that we recently became aware [...]
I will admit, with only the slightest embarrassment, that the November elections depressed me mightily. As early as mid summer, I promised myself not to get worked up about the current state of politics. One candidate seemed frightful, and the other dreadfully dull. Neither vice presidential candidate did much for me, either, though a [...]
A few weeks after the Presidential elections, anger and dismay among conservatives appear to have given way to malaise. In some places (such as at The Imaginative Conservative) public and intellectual life go on much as before—in part because few of us, here, were terribly surprised by the election returns, in part because we simply do [...]
How can the federal government be prevented from usurping powers that the Constitution doesn’t grant to it? It’s an alarming fact that few Americans ask this question anymore. Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves nothing. [...]