The phrase “compassionate conservatism” is of recent origin. While any number of politicians have laid claim to it, one thing is certain: it was born of the worry that being labeled a “conservative,” simply, would cause you to be portrayed as lacking in basic human feelings, particularly for the plight of the poor. Thus “compassionate [...]
Conservatives active in the business of influencing public policy have been giving increasing attention in recent years to the idea that politics is ultimately an epiphenomenon of culture. What these activists have recognized is that political mobilization and efficiently produced position papers by themselves will not effect lasting change in the way we are governed. [...]
In the retrospect of forty years I can see my book, The Quest for Community (first published by Oxford University Press in 1953), as one of the harbingers of what would become by the end of the 1950s a full-fledged renascence of conservatism. There had been authentic and forthright individual conservatives before the 50s; among [...]
The continued prevalence of the materialist superstition was manifest in a recent issue of Time magazine titled “In Search of the Mind.”[1] The cover story for the issue authoritatively declaimed that “consciousness may be nothing more than an evanescent by-product of more mundane, wholly physical processes.” According to one medical school neuroscientist cited in the [...]
In Defense of the Constitution, by George Carey (214 pages, Liberty Fund, 1995) Most Americans are puzzled that their belief in limited government is not matched by government officials who persistently intrude into their daily lives. Also, their settled beliefs regarding what is right— what they are permitted to do— and what they must not do, [...]
The whole case for our commitment to equality as a national goal comes from an isolated phrase—”all men are created equal”—in the Declaration of Independence. Was Lincoln right in his exposition of this phrase in the Gettysburg Address? The idea is as old, of course, as that magical first sentence of the Gettysburg Address: “Fourscore [...]
The Roots of American Order, by Russell Kirk It is nowadays the fashion to think of these United States as a wholly “invented” polity, as the pure and miraculous handiwork of those gifted political craftsmen who were our honored forefathers and whose high achievements we celebrate during this commemorative year. It is also the conventional [...]
The nearly-exclusive focus on a select few, virtually deified famous founders impoverishes our understanding of the American founding. It also departs from the canons of good scholarship. The demands of honest scholarship require scholars to give attention to the thoughts, words, and deeds of not only a few selected demigods but also an expansive company [...]
Toward the end of my undergraduate days, I came across a passage in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Lecture which I found startling and even a bit disturbing. Solzhenitsyn begins his address on the nature and role of literature with a brief, enigmatic quotation from Dostoevsky: “Beauty will save the world.” Solzhenitsyn confesses that the phrase had [...]
Whit Stillman has claimed that he does not want to make serious dramas, only comedies. This does not mean, however, that his work has no serious intention. Critics have classified his three films, Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998), as comedies of manners, and are reminded of Jane Austen. And [...]
There is no dearth of studies on the political thought of the American founding era. Yet there is no consensus on what theories, values, or goals were uppermost in the minds of the founding generation. On the contrary, on a number of critical theoretical issues and concerns, there appears to be an inverse relationship between [...]
In September 1974, the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott delivered the Abbott Memorial Lecture at Colorado College. Entitled “A Place for Learning,” Oakeshott’s lecture attacked the dominant model of education, a model predicated on the theories of the American educationist John Dewey. Learning, Oakeshott observed, should take place under “conditions of direction and restraint designed to [...]
Russell Kirk Anyone who turns the dial of a television set nowadays may be tempted to remark that genuine learning came to an end during the latter half of the twentieth century. For the moment, however, I employ the word “end” not to suggest termination, but in the sense of “purpose” or “object.” [...]
Just what is this classical patrimony received by the inhabitants of North America and consciously cherished well into the twentieth century? To Europeans living west of the Elbe or south of the Danube, the remains of classical civilization are visible still: intelligent observes are aware of a continuity extending over many generations. For that matter, [...]