About Michael Warren Davis

Michael Warren Davis as served as Editor-in-Chief of Crisis Magazine, as U.S. Editor of the Catholic Herald, and as an assistant editor for Quadrant. His writing has been published in The Salisbury Review and The University Bookman.

Is “Paradise Lost” a Christian Poem?

By |2023-05-21T12:42:00-05:00May 21st, 2023|Categories: Christianity, Culture, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Milton, Timeless Essays|

Does “Paradise Lost” succeed as a poem qua poem, but not as a didactic theological poem? If we lived four hundred year earlier, might we suggest Milton pit Satan primarily against St. Gabriel or St. Michael? The concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian are famously invoked by Nietzsche in the context of Greek drama, but not [...]

The Coming Pandemonium

By |2020-10-03T20:37:36-05:00October 3rd, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Modernity, Politics, Revolution|

We have been conservatives for too long. We’ve been content merely to mitigate the effects of the demonic forces unleashed by revolutionary movements like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Now, we must become reactionaries. Only by a mass reversion of the West to the apostolic faith can we end this permanent revolution and throw off [...]

Should Conservatives Embrace a Form of Socialism?

By |2020-02-25T01:06:01-06:00February 24th, 2020|Categories: Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism|Tags: |

We conservatives need to begin approaching ideas rather than labels. Where we rightfully oppose Marxism for adopting a soullessly ideological worldview, we should be careful to note that Liberalism, though as dangerous as any other ideology when adopted with fanaticism, is also too close to home for us to dismiss in the same way. It [...]

Saving Our Souls by Rejecting Technology

By |2023-08-22T19:14:40-05:00June 4th, 2019|Categories: Community, Culture, Happiness, Wisdom|

Alas, we can’t un-invent digital technology. Pandora’s box can’t be closed once it’s opened. The 20th century gave rise to no end of technologies that mankind has come to acknowledge as absolutely evil and yet that we can’t eradicate completely. For those brave and willing few, however, I urge you to join me in taking [...]

The Radicalism of Russell Kirk

By |2019-04-28T15:53:42-05:00April 28th, 2019|Categories: Conservatism, Libertarianism, Politics, Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind|

The West has been undone by consumerism, the Sexual Revolution, outsourcing, urbanization, and centralization—all defended by modern conservatives as “the price we must pay” to live in a free and prosperous country. They’re wrong. As Russell Kirk argued, the principal function of government is not to ensure the material security and comfort of its citizenry. [...]

The Fatally-Flawed Fusionism of Frank Meyer

By |2019-05-21T14:17:43-05:00January 19th, 2018|Categories: Conservatism, Freedom, Ideology, Libertarianism, Politics, Traditional Conservatives and Libertarians|

Frank Meyer was a man looking desperately for faults in the philosophy to which he was most attracted: traditionalism. Finding none, he simply made up another philosophy: fusionism. But instead of coopting the energy and scientific rigor of libertarianism for the traditionalist cause, he simply empowered the former at the latter’s expense… American conservatism originates [...]

The Good Christian’s Guide to Friendly Evangelism

By |2023-07-29T21:06:51-05:00February 20th, 2016|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, G.K. Chesterton, Religion|

Those who come to the Catholic Church are generally escaping the merely modern for the ancient, the enduring, and the everlasting. They do not want worship that reflects the current mood: They want worship instituted for all men and for all times. Though, as with any high-church Protestant, conversion to Roman Catholicism is always in [...]

Why I Am a Monarchical Republican

By |2019-06-11T17:54:01-05:00October 1st, 2015|Categories: Monarchy, Republicans|

John Adams Gathering my thoughts to once again tackle the question of monarchism, I glanced over the comments on my 2014 essay, “Why I’m a Monarchist.” One commenter, known only as Harris and identified only as an aging Maltese, noted that “Thomas Hobbes makes the argument more pungently, and more brutally. What is [...]

The Land that Cultural Relativism Forgot

By |2015-10-20T12:53:08-05:00September 24th, 2015|Categories: Culture, Featured, Relativism, Western Civilization, Western Tradition|

Cultural relativism is that preferred meta-ethical philosophy of left-wing apologists for barbarities committed by Islamists and other violent fanatics, both at home and abroad. When some old-school liberal like Bill Maher condemns some Middle Eastern theocracy for preventing women from driving, executing apostates, or refusing to prosecute honor killings—for being, in a word, illiberal—he’s barraged [...]

The Hideous and the Damned: Arguing with Roger Scruton

By |2016-02-12T15:28:01-06:00March 26th, 2015|Categories: Beauty, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Poetry, Roger Scruton, T.S. Eliot|Tags: |

I have been encouraged by Mr. Joseph Pearce’s two excellent essays, “How Many Loves? Arguing with C.S. Lewis” and “The Vulgar Mob: Arguing with G.K. Chesterton,” to offer up a little challenge to one thinker who has indelibly influenced my own conservatism. I have tremendous admiration for Roger Scruton’s courage in abandoning his academic career [...]

Radical Islam: The Term That Shall Not Be Spoken

By |2015-03-18T15:23:31-05:00March 19th, 2015|Categories: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Islam, Politics, Terrorism, War|Tags: |

The official position of the Obama Administration seems to be that our country is at war with extremism, including but not limited to those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam. It is also the position of the executive branch that proclaiming war against radical Islam specifically is unjustified, and for two reasons: first, [...]

Archbishop Welby: Anglo-Distributist?

By |2016-08-03T10:36:40-05:00November 30th, 2014|Categories: Anglicanism, Christendom, Distributism|Tags: |

Justin Welby, the humble and good-humored Archbishop of Canterbury, marked himself from the beginning of his reign by the contrast he struck with his predecessor Rowan Williams, now Baron of Oystermouth. Lord Williams was one of the seminal reasons for my conversion to Anglicanism. He was born in Ystradgynlais in Swansea, Wales, to a Welsh-speaking [...]

Anglican Church in North America

By |2014-10-19T11:30:12-05:00October 19th, 2014|Categories: Anglicanism|Tags: |

On October 9th, thousands gathered at the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta for the investiture of Foley Beach as Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). You would be forgiven for never having heard of Dr. Foley or his church body. The ACNA is the largest single umbrella organization within [...]

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