Robert Frost: The Poet as Philosopher, by Peter J. Stanlis. Probably no other American poet has suffered more misunderstanding at the hands of his readers, admirers and detractors alike, than Robert Frost. The range and variety of misreadings of both the man and his poetry are legion: he was simply a nature poet, child of [...]
If you are allergic to emotion, this may not be the film for you. But if your heart yearns for good to triumph over evil, for beauty to emerge from squalor, and for the vindication of strong heroes who can fight, shoot, and pray, Les Misérables will be an exhilarating experience. Putting this story before [...]
As a British judge, how would you rule under the forthcoming law allowing homosexual marriage? Winners may become British judges after purchasing a horse-hair wig. 1) Clarissa wants to divorce Arthur because he has been having an affair with Clive. Can divorce be granted? (a) yes; (b) no; (c) yes if Clive agrees to a sex-change [...]
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. [...]
The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore offers books in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, M.E. Bradford and Christopher Dawson. We hope you will enjoy the books by those who inspire us to be imaginative conservatives. We hope you will join us in The Imaginative [...]
The human body needs some stressors, and everything organic and complex communicates with the environment via stressors.—Nassim Nicholas Taleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, is back with a new book: Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. He recently sat down with Reason’s Nick Gillespie for an interview. Taleb makes [...]
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… [...]