A Sign of Uselessness

By |2023-11-10T08:46:04-06:00March 16th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Essential, Liberalism, Morality, New Polity|

The cloistered nun reminds us that, despite appearances, the purpose of our lives is not to be useful—not for the liberal project, nor even for the Church. Rather, the meaning of every vocation is simply to "be" for God alone, a "being-for that," as the monastery reveals, is never really useless in the end. Liberalism cannot [...]

Escaping the Cave of Liberalism

By |2023-08-19T08:50:35-05:00February 5th, 2023|Categories: Books, Catholicism, Humanum, Liberalism, New Polity, Philosophy, Theology|

D.C. Schindler's "The Politics of the Real" is a brilliant addition to the postliberal movement. By understanding liberalism as a distortion of the Christian order, we can recognize it as a sustained war upon reality. And we can understand a true postliberalism as nothing more or less than the New Evangelization, the effort of converting entire [...]

The Democracy of the Unborn

By |2023-01-30T14:21:36-06:00January 30th, 2023|Categories: Abortion, Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Liberalism, Timeless Essays, Tradition|

Society has been reduced to those living in the present; but in being reduced, it has excluded the democracy of the dead and unborn. We, in the present, must fight for this most obscure of all classes. In the abortion debate, one of the pro-choice arguments is based on the idea of “personhood.” Personhood is [...]

The Tory Tradition

By |2022-07-31T15:25:38-05:00July 31st, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Economics, England, History, Liberalism, Politics, Timeless Essays|

There is a Tory tradition in America that runs against the grain of establishment Liberalism, embracing home, hearth, community, family, church, nature, and the moral realities of everyday life, and opposed to individualism, unlimited free markets, libertarianism, secularism, and the rootless loneliness of global modernity. This tradition comes from within America, not without. One day [...]

A Restless Tocqueville

By |2023-07-28T15:45:34-05:00July 28th, 2022|Categories: Alexis de Tocqueville, Books, Bruce Frohnen, Liberalism, Peter A. Lawler, Philosophy, Politics, Timeless Essays|

At the heart of Alexis de Tocqueville’s thought lies the “restless mind”—a mind that sees the essence of humanity in the realization that each of us “dies alone” and that life is but a fleeting moment hedged in between the abysses of the pre-born and the dead. The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the [...]

Who’s on the Right Side of History?

By |2022-03-31T08:09:24-05:00March 31st, 2022|Categories: Conservatism, History, Joseph Pearce, Liberalism, Senior Contributors|

Many so-called conservatives are buying into the progressive presumption that things are progressing inexorably in one direction, which the progressives think is a liberated future and which conservatives think is a libertine hell. Such conservatives agree with the progressive perspective; they just don’t like it! It is odd that those who consider themselves “progressives” assign [...]

Liberalism & the Conduct of American Foreign Policy

By |2021-05-14T12:40:53-05:00May 11th, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Foreign Affairs, Liberalism, Liberty, Politics|

Is it possible to reconcile our commitment to the abstract truth at the heart of American politics—that all men are created equal, and endowed with certain unalienable rights—with prudence and restraint in statecraft on the international stage? In November of 2003—eight months after American forces first put boots on the ground in the Iraq War—President [...]

Is ‘Woke’ Broke? The Perils of Living in a Parallel Universe

By |2021-05-06T10:33:56-05:00May 9th, 2021|Categories: John Horvat, Language, Liberalism, Politics|

“Woke” is a doomed word since it expresses a distorted reality. It is based upon Critical Race Theory that frames the debate to favor a class-struggle narrative, dividing humanity into oppressors and oppressed. Like all Marxist lingo, “woke” deepens resentments instead of healing them. If there is any word guaranteed to enhance a conversation or [...]

“The Madness of Crowds”: How Identity Politics Has Replaced Religion

By |2021-03-09T14:26:15-06:00March 11th, 2021|Categories: Books, Ideology, Liberalism, Politics, Sexuality|

Into the breach—or onto the deserted ground—has marched a new metaphysics in the form of a new religion. In “The Madness of Crowds,” Douglas Murray explains this “religion” of identity politics. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, by Douglas Murray (304 pages, Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021) A better title for this book might have [...]

Innocence Lost: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Literature

By |2021-03-02T00:45:37-06:00March 2nd, 2021|Categories: American Republic, Conservatism, Great Books, Herman Melville, Liberalism, Literature, Paul Krause, Senior Contributors|

In the wellspring of classic nineteenth-century American literature, a spectacular theme unites our greatest authors. They, in various ways, challenge the naïve optimism of the “American Adam” and American liberalism. They are deeply conservative in their skepticism toward human and civilizational progress and perfection. It is true that the classics, especially Virgil and Cicero, along [...]

The Crisis of Liberalism

By |2021-01-17T01:04:36-06:00January 16th, 2021|Categories: Books, Conservatism, Liberalism|

Today’s Democratic party is not the party of Joe Biden’s youth or middle age. As author Fred Siegel correctly observes, it is a top-bottom coalition of the well-credentialed (but not well-educated) upper-middle class and beyond, plus those who work for, depend upon, or otherwise presume to shelter under the benevolent arm of government. The Crisis [...]

Aristotle Contra Mundum: The Woke Come for the Philosopher

By |2020-09-20T15:15:19-05:00September 19th, 2020|Categories: Aristotle, Christianity, Equality, Great Books, Liberalism, Politics, Virtue|

Professor Agnes Callard is admirable in her unwillingness to cancel Aristotle. In light of recent events, she might find his views are not so much prejudiced as they are realistic, and, on that note, timeless, unlike the egalitarian utopias which liberals are always chasing. The philosopher had a disposition toward the world around him which [...]

Memory & Hope: Restoring the Teaching of American History

By |2020-08-31T16:56:46-05:00August 31st, 2020|Categories: American Republic, Conservatism, Education, History, Hope, Liberalism, Progressivism|

The currently pervading approach to American history presents America in the worst possible light, distorting the full truth of our past and damaging our political health. Our K-12 schools need a restoration of temporal continuity, the key to revitalizing history and civics education that forms young people who both appreciate the gifts of the past [...]

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