Liberal Education: Piercing the Dome

By |2024-03-18T20:50:26-05:00March 18th, 2024|Categories: Democracy, Education, Freedom, Liberal Learning|

Three proposed ends of liberal education — career, democracy, and a free mind — do not pierce the dome of the bourgeois workaday world. Let us begin anew with a question: “How can liberal education pierce the dome that encloses the bourgeois workaday world?" This essay was originally delivered at Magdalen College on October 25, [...]

Twelve Reasons to Support the American Solidarity Party

By |2024-03-14T19:53:14-05:00March 14th, 2024|Categories: Dwight Longenecker, Politics, Senior Contributors|

As we approach the presidential election, I can proudly say I am not supporting either of the main candidates, but that I am a member of the American Solidarity Party. Like Don Quixote, I shall don my saucepan helmet, ride out on Rocinante, and tilt at some windmills. We all know the set reactions to [...]

Liberals and the Libel of “Christian Nationalism”

By |2024-03-07T18:56:33-06:00March 7th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Christianity, Civil Society, Civilization, Liberalism|

Christ gave His disciples the Divine Commission to go and teach all nations, baptizing them. Christians are called to change society—all society, every society. They pursue this goal with charity and zeal, respecting the free will of individuals. Wherever Christianity has gone, its charity has transformed nations and peoples. Whenever the extreme left is in [...]

The Landmark Decision of “Dred Scott v. Sandford”

By |2024-03-05T19:53:23-06:00March 5th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Congress, Constitution, Politics, Slavery, Supreme Court|

“Dred Scott” is a landmark decision because it answered questions regarding slavery that the Supreme Court had not previously addressed. It is also one of the most infamous decisions, furthering the great divide facing the nation regarding the question of slavery and moving the country further down the path toward the Civil War. Dred Scott [...]

Against Moral Progress

By |2024-03-08T19:20:31-06:00March 4th, 2024|Categories: Conservatism, Morality, Progressivism, Religion|

Morality only “progresses” as a phenomenon of gift, in which what is good and worth doing is seen as good and worth doing by a subsequent generation, which takes on the morality of their fathers and repeats it, as their own morality. But this means that progress in morality is never assured. It may not [...]

The Weakness of Caesar & the Power of the Cross

By |2024-03-08T19:31:55-06:00March 2nd, 2024|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Politics|

From its birth, the Church worked to overthrow tyrannies and establish societies of justice. But it did this in a manner unlike any other revolutionary movement. Christianity has always redeemed politics by surpassing it, fulfilling it beyond itself. It defeats violence through peace and not with more powerful violence. My mother always told me that [...]

Keeping Asian-Americans in Their Place

By |2024-02-22T05:58:52-06:00February 21st, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Education, Joseph Mussomeli, Liberalism, Politics, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

We should not try to right one historic wrong by committing a new one. After enduring over a century of white racism, now the Asian-American community must cope with a more subtle but just as sinister form of liberal racism: the harsh Orwellian reality that in modern America all minorities are equal, but some minorities [...]

Should We Celebrate Presidents’ Day, or Washington’s Birthday?

By |2024-02-18T16:09:00-06:00February 18th, 2024|Categories: American Republic, Constitution, George Washington, Gleaves Whitney, Presidency, Timeless Essays|

People ask why a few of us presidential junkies would like to see Presidents’ Day changed back to Washington’s Birthday. The technical explanation has to do with a misguided law called HR 15951 that was passed in 1968 to make federal holidays less complicated. The real answer is simply this: George Washington is our greatest [...]

The Measure of Abraham Lincoln

By |2024-02-11T23:10:29-06:00February 11th, 2024|Categories: Abraham Lincoln, Conservatism, Essential, Featured, Presidency, RAK, Russell Kirk, Timeless Essays|

Abraham Lincoln never was a doctrinaire; he rose from very low estate to very high estate, and he knew the savagery which lies so close beneath the skin of man, and he knew that most men are good only out of obedience to routine and convention. Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks [...]

Thomas More on Conscience, Courage, & the Comedy of Politics

By |2024-02-06T18:00:46-06:00February 6th, 2024|Categories: Christendom, Christian Humanism, Civil Society, England, History, Natural Law, Philosophy, Politics, St. Thomas More, Timeless Essays, Wisdom|

As the gulf between classical and postmodern notions of conscience and government grows ever wider and their clashes more explosive, it is high time for the jury to give renewed attention to the nuances of Thomas More’s understanding of the apparently competing, but ultimately harmonious, demands of divine, natural, and human law. In August of [...]

The Truth About Ronald Reagan

By |2024-02-05T18:33:55-06:00February 5th, 2024|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, History, Ronald Reagan, Timeless Essays|

Nearly three decades after the Reagan administration ended, several views of the fortieth president—all conflicting—have taken hold in the American popular mind. One is that Reagan was an “amiable dunce,” who was “sleepwalking through history.” Luck and circumstances made him a successful president, but he should be remembered today only as an oaf, simply being in [...]

James Otis, Then and Now

By |2024-02-05T18:35:10-06:00February 4th, 2024|Categories: American Founding, American Republic, Bradley J. Birzer, History, Politics, Rights, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

Going back to the first principles of the Founding, one finds that the Founders talked unceasingly about rights. Rights language became a critical part of the cultural landscape when James Otis delivered his oration on the nature of rights, the common law, and the natural law. Feel free to call me a conservative (I won’t [...]

Liberal Education and Politics: The Case of “The Tempest”

By |2024-01-19T18:06:11-06:00January 19th, 2024|Categories: Benjamin Lockerd, Education, Featured, Liberal Learning, Politics, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare|

A liberal education is free in the sense that it is free of practical goals. We study our language and our literature or biology and chemistry and psychology just because it is a human instinct to do so, and because it is enjoyable to do so. Everything is Political Just as I began my college [...]

Politics, Slavery, and the Civil War

By |2024-01-18T15:20:38-06:00January 18th, 2024|Categories: Civil War, Mark Malvasi, Politics, Senior Contributors, Slavery|

No episode in the American past is more susceptible to such manipulation—manipulation rather than debate—than the Civil War. On the historical question permit me to be blunt and unequivocal. There can be no doubt that slavery was central to all that divided the northern and the southern states, and that slavery was ultimately responsible for [...]

Go to Top