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 […]
Huckleberry Finn is no hero, though he does symbolize the American conscience at the time Mark Twain wrote, or at least the conscience Twain hoped for. Yes, “Huckleberry Finn” is a coming-of-age tale and a social criticism and satire, but it also asks crucial questions: Who actually changes? What type of American will change? Huckleberry […]
As did St. Augustine as the barbarians tore through Rome’s gate on August 24, 410, at midnight, J.R.R. Tolkien looked out over a ruined world: a world on one side controlled by ideologues, and, consequently, a world of the Gulag, the Holocaust camps, the Killing fields, and total war; on the other: a world of […]
Incarnating the truth in art is the supreme test for a writer with convictions, and this problem is the real heart of the tension between entertainment and literature. I had a friend in England I’ll call Rosemary. She had always wanted to be a writer, so she honed her craft and eventually got a contract […]
It’s weird that my musings should have led me from the conviviality of the Super Bowl Party to thoughts of the Nazi Party. Such was the shadow that fell during the commercial breaks in the sporting action. As for the action itself, it contained more faith, hope and charity—i.e., the absence of hatred—than the hype […]
As for human institutions that have gone astray, my view is that they are only dead branches hanging on to the trees of education, religion, and society to which my real loyalty lies. I would rather the dead wood of such institutions be pruned away so that the true wood can grow. I am nothing […]
“Orthodoxy” ends with Chesterton delving deep into the divine comedy at the heart of all things. If angels can fly because they take themselves lightly, does God take Himself lightly? In a recent essay, I wrote about truth and masks in the world and works of Oscar Wilde. As a follow-up, I’d like to focus […]
Dieterich Buxtehude might seem at first glance an interesting minor figure, the “man who influenced Bach.” But consider: if he was a decisive inspiration to Bach, that means that Buxtehude can lay claim to being the immediate progenitor of the mainstream classical music tradition we all enjoy. Prelude Our experience of classical music has become […]
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 […]
The conservative believes that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are interrelated, and that all things are measured against these three transcendentals. Conservatism seeks the Truth that has emerged over time, drawing from the deep wellsprings of human experience, and builds anew on foundations that have withstood the tests of time. It fosters order […]
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