Roger Lewis - Modernist, Moralist and Wit

by Stephen Masty

Roger Lewis

British author Roger Lewis is adored by a small coterie of true conservative modernists and, it seems, despised by a much larger body of chatterati, mediacrats and the Leftist cultural mafia. Such polar reactions to this literary moralist, innovative biographer and wicked satirist explain much about the UK’s culture wars, so changed since the first half of the twentieth century. Parallels may also be drawn with American media-culture and public values.

Lewis, a 52-year-old Welshman transplanted to England, resembles a Victorian mill producing industrial quantities of good reviews, academic articles, biographies and satire. Most of the works by this former Oxford don, who has first-class degrees and honours from St. Andrews, Magdalen and Wolfson, are hallmarked by his distinctive modernism overlaying a vigorous conservatism, together reminiscent of T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis.

Like both, he is a revolutionary traditionalist who couples modern art-forms with timeless values: a concept understood by imaginative conservatives, not fully comprehended by their hidebound kinsmen who retreat from modernism in any form, and often loathed by what Lenin would today call Brit-culture’s Leftist true-believers, fellow-travellers from the BBC and similar media, and the useful-idiots of the unthinking chattering classes; in other words, much of the UK’s cultural Establishment.

Lewis has single-handedly reinvented the literary and show-business biography with his innovative lives of Sir Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers, Charles Hawtrey and Anthony Burgess, turning an age-old formula into works of modern art.

The very structure and style of each biography is tailored to his subject, reflecting how modern media figures create their own personae for professional and personal gain, and how, ultimately, the audience’s and the biographer’s perceptions contribute just as much to our understanding of these half-real-half-concocted figures as do the conventional dates and details of their professional and personal lives. A Lewis biography, echoing Yeats, will not “separate the dancer from the dance.”

The First Principles Of Monetary Policy

by Brian Domitrovic

What is the set of principles behind the government’s conduct of monetary policy? It’s a hard question to answer. The Constitution gives the United States the power “to coin money” and “regulate the value thereof” and to fix exchange rates with respect to foreign coin. But clearly, the Federal Reserve has moved far beyond this little rubric as goes the basis of its operations. “Price stability in the context of full employment,” “smoothing out booms and busts,” “making an orderly environment for federal financing,” “being the lender of last resort,” “talking away the punch bowl before the party gets going,” “preventing another Great Depression”—these are the guiding lights, real winners all of them, you hear about when it comes to our central bank.

And what do we get? A banking system gorged with reserves, and an economic growth rate desperate for 2% coming out of a deep, dark recession. Where’d we go wrong?

What Did Americans Inherit from the Ancients?

by Russell Kirk

Just what is this classical patrimony received by the inhabitants of North America and consciously cherished well into the twentieth century? To Europeans living west of the Elbe or south of the Danube, the remains of classical civilization are visible still: intelligent observes are aware of a continuity extending over many generations. For that matter, Roman ruins survive from the Atlantic shore of the Iberian peninsula all the way to the Euphrates, or from Scotland to Morocco. People who speak Romance languages cannot be altogether unaware of the Roman past, nor can Greeks forget their distant cultural ancestors.  But in North America, neither monuments of antiquity nor the roots of language can evoke memories of civilizations broken, yet somehow working through us in a ghostly fashion. Nevertheless, we pay public homage to long-dead Greeks and Romans. Why is the public architecture of our national capital still dominated by classical columns and domes? Why do we still pay some lip-service to the disciplines of the humanities, the sources of which may be traced back to Greece six centuries before Christ?

Honoring Those who Swear to Defend the Constitution

by Winston Elliott III

Today I honor the men of the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army who have sacrificed their lives while doing their duty. For them, and all of their comrades in arms, I ask God to bless them and keep them.

To Lt. Winston Elliott IV, platoon leader in the 1st BCT of the 82nd Airborne, I offer these words: Strength & Honor, my son. We await the safe return of you and your men.

Today is an appropriate time to review the mission of those who serve in the U.S. military. We should also remember the responsibility of citizens to hold accountable those elected to public office who determine where and when our soldiers are asked to fight. We are ultimately responsible for the decisions which put our soldiers in harms way.

Below is the oath my son swore when he was commissioned an officer in the United States Army. How many citizens of our Republic honor these words?

"I, _____ , having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

Thoughts after Lambeth

by T.S. Eliot

[TIC readers, I had the privilege of transcribing Eliot's famous essay, "Thoughts on Lambeth" this week.  Below is a significant part of the essay (roughly  2/3 of it).  I have edited it only down in size; I've not made any other changes.  The formatting of the original piece is quite strange (lots of weird characters, etc), and I've done my best to preserve all of these as well as the English (as in UK) spellings.  I did remove all of the footnotes.  This is some of Eliot's most revealing writing, especially regarding The Waste Land as a personal journey not as a critique of modernity).  It also is deeply rooted in time (early 1930s controversies over birth control) but touches upon transcendent themes.  That Eliot saw the Anglican Church as the true Catholic Church with the Roman Catholic Church being the fundamentalist church and the "free churches" as emotional outlets continues to fascinate me.  What would Eliot say about the current state of Christianity?  Of the Anglican church?  Well, please enjoy].

The Church of England washes its dirty linen in public. It is convenient and brief to begin with this metaphorical statement. In contrast to some other institutions both civil and ecclesiastical, the linen does get washed. To have linen to wash is something; and to assert that one's linen never needed washing would be a suspicious boast. Without some understanding of these habits of the Church, the reader of the Report of the Lambeth Conference (1930) will find it a difficult and in some directions a misleading document. The Report needs to be read in the light of previous Reports; with some knowledge, and with some sympathy for that oddest of institutions, the Church of England.

As the Boomers Head for the Barn

by Patrick J. Buchanan

When the April figures on unemployment were released May 4, they were more than disappointing. They were deeply disturbing.

While the unemployment rate had fallen from 8.2 percent to 8.1 percent, 342,000 workers had stopped looking for work. They had just dropped out of the labor market.

Only 63.6 percent of the U.S. working age population is now in the labor force, the lowest level since December 1981.

During the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton years, participation in the labor force rose steadily to a record 67 percent. The plunge since has been almost uninterrupted.

Comic Book Salvation

by Stratford Caldecott

… Stand up and keep your childishness:

Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;

But don’t believe in anything

That can’t be told in coloured pictures.

Chesterton would not have liked many of the stories told in coloured pictures by American comic books, which these days tend to dystopia and sado-eroticism – an all-too predictable reflection of the present state of our culture. But some he would have liked, and I dare to think I could show him my own comic collection without (much) embarrassment.

My personal golden age of comics was in the late 60s and 1970s, when I would roam the streets of London looking for the latest American imports: Batman or Green Lantern,The Fantastic Four or The Mighty Thor, and a dozen other titles, illustrated by such artists as Neal Adams, the Buscema brothers, Jack “King” Kirby, or Jim Steranko. Kirby it was who, in partnership with Stan “the Man” Lee, gave us most of the great Marvel heroes, including the Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and the Silver Surfer, and his heavily emblematic and dynamic style influenced generations of later artists. A quick scurry through Marvel-related entries in Wikipedia will explain what I am talking about, if you don’t already know. You’ll find plenty of coloured pictures, too.

The Permanent Things & Imaginative Conservatism (part I)

by Winston Elliott III & Darrin Moore

Below is the first video segment of the recent discussion of conservatism and the American Republic with host Darrin Moore & editor of The Imaginative Conservative, Winston Elliott, on WAAM Radio Talk1600 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. More to come...

The excellent graphics were produced by Darrin Moore.

Thomas Jefferson and the American Declaration of Independence: The Power and Natural Rights of a Free People

by Ross Lence

Ross Lence

It is not accidental that the Greek word for history (historia) is a derivative of the verb meaning to narrate what one has learnt, for all history is, in some manner or other, the relating of tales about a people. Now as we all know some stories are more dramatic than others; some are more accurate; and some, dare we say it, are more important. The most important tales for any people are those told about the beginnings of their political society and the forming of the body politic, beginnings which are often blurred with the society's conception of virtue, piety, and the gods. Thus, Plato begins The Laws, his political treatise par excellence, with the old Athenian stranger asking his two interlocutors: "Tell me, gentlemen, to whom do you give the credit for establishing your codes of law? Is it a god, or a man?" Cleinias' response is very determined: "A god, sir, a god—and that's the honest truth."[1]

This apotheosis of the beginnings of political society is universal: all societies shroud their founders and their nascent mores in their respective myths and symbols. America is no exception. Franklin stood in the rain flying a kite. Betsy Ross was at home knitting a flag. George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and would not tell a lie—even about throwing a dollar across the Potomac. And make no mistake about it: How these myths are told and to whom, when, and where are all critical questions, for it is through these myths and symbols that a society transmits its values and beliefs, or in the language of Eric Voegelin, comes to know itself as a people. Propriety dictates, therefore, that we not tell our children that Benjamin Franklin would not recognize lightning if it struck him in the head; that Betsy Ross was really a very simple lady, doing her very best to reproduce the Union Jack; or that George Washington was an unsavory, unstable character at best, having never psychologically adjusted to either his red hair or his wooden teeth. To tell our children these things would be to destroy their creed, to tread on their dreams. In the final analysis failure to transmit the proper myths and symbols will weaken—if not destroy— the moral fibre of any nation.

Last Words by T.S. Eliot

by T. S. Eliot

With this number I terminate my editorship of The Criterion. I have been considering this decision for about two years: but I did not wish to come to a conclusion precipitately, because I knew that my retirement would bring The Criterion to an end. During the autumn, however, the prospect of war had involved me in hurried plans for suspending publication; and in the subsequent detente I became convinced that my enthusiasm for continuing the editorial work did not exist.

Sixteen years is a long time for one man to remain editor of a review; for this review, I have sometimes wondered whether it has not been too long. A feeling of staleness has crept over me, and a suspicion that I ought to retire before I was aware that this feeling had communicated itself to the readers. A stale editor cannot do his contributors justice.

I have also felt a growing discontent, in that increase of work in other directions (both inside and outside of Russell Square) has made it less and less possible for me to perform to my own satisfaction a job which might well occupy the whole of one man's time. I am convinced that The Criterion is not the kind of review which can be taken up and continued by one editor after another. Another man might make something better of it, but he would have to make something very different; and in so doing he would be handicapped rather than aided by The Criterion's tradition. If a similar review is needed, then it will be far better for someone else to start a new review with a new title. New conditions will very likely require new methods and somewhat different aims.

A Liberal Wolf in Communal Clothing

by Bradley C. S. Watson

The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism, by Bruce Frohnen, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996.

Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience, edited by George W. Carey and Bruce Frohnen, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.

Communitarianism at one level is a contemporary school of thought that takes to task liberalism as a political theory. As such, one might expect communitarianism to be in fundamental sympathy with conservative critiques of liberalism. But such is not necessarily the case. The communitarians constitute an eclectic group, including among their number Harvard government professor Michael Sandel, Maryland political theorist William Galston, McGill philosopher Charles Taylor, George Washington sociologist Amitai Etzioni, and Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah. All share the view that individuals are constituted by a complex set of communal attachments and dispositions and that any attempt to describe human beings as outgrowths of an abstract, individualist “state of nature” are fundamentally misleading and doomed to failure.

Communitarianism as practical social philosophy, as distinct from academic theory, has, over the past ten to fifteen years, been reinvigorated as a result of the perception that America in particular is a nation whose individualism has gotten out of control. Everything from high illegitimacy rates to poverty to criminal conduct tends to be ascribed by “political’’ communitarians to individuals’ lack of grounding in community norms and aspirations. This lack of grounding is furthered by the liberal state’s official neutrality on questions of the moral good. In the absence of non-neutral norms, people-especially youths-are left with nothing but nihilistic value-positing, defended by nothing more than tabloid television’s seemingly ubiquitous, if implicit, question: Who is to say what is right and wrong? These unconstrained individuals therefore do not have benefit of their community’s salutary proscriptions, or their forefathers’ practical wisdom. Their alienation from anything other than the politics of the self leaves them vacuously unencumbered-free in a world where freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Quote of the Day: The Sack of Rome

by John Barnes

Brad Birzer's article A New Dark Age mentioned the 410 sack of Rome by the Visigoths, the event that prompted St. Augustine to pen City of God. Brad's article brought to mind the closing passage from one of my favorite works of history:

"There is a term placed on everything, even the world. On the night of August 24 of the year 410 the term was finished. One account states that it was at midnight; but a more trustworthy version states that it was about an hour after dark, and that it had begun to rain. At that time the Salarian Gate of Rome was secretly opened by Gothic slaves in the City. The troops of Alaric entered, and their entry was signaled by a giant trumpt blast such as will never be heard again till the last day.

And, on the terrible blast of the Gothic Trumpet, the world came to its end.

It had endured, in the central core of it that mattered, for eleven hundred and sixty-three years."

-R.A. Lafferty, The Fall of Rome (1971)

Edmund Burke and the Constitution

by Russell Kirk

Constitutions are something more than lines written upon parchment. When a written constitution endures—and most written constitutions have not been long for this world—that document has been derived successfully from long-established customs, beliefs, statutes, and interests; it has reflected a political order already accepted, tacitly at least, by the dominant element among a people.

True constitutions are not invented: they grow. The Constitution of the United States has endured for two centuries because it arose from the healthy roots of more than two centuries of colonial experience and of several centuries of British experience. For the most part, the American Constitution expressed formally what already was accepted, practiced, and believed in by the people of the new republic. A constitution without deep roots is no true constitution at all.

In a symposium at Kenyon College, three decades ago, I expressed such views. Clinton Rossiter dissented. Why, a constitution can be created overnight, he said; just that had been done in many European countries shortly after the First World War and the Second World War.

"Where are those constitutions now?" I inquired. And today one might ask, with equal pertinence, "Where are now the constitutions of the emergent African states, so grandly promulgated in the 1950s and 1960's?" The framers of a successful constitution must take into account the history, the moral order, the resources, the prospects of a country—and much else besides. Those framers must be endowed with political imagination—which is not at all the same thing as political utopianism—and with much practical knowledge of affairs. Otherwise a constitution may live no longer than a butterfly.

Seeing Both Sides: Aquinas or Shakespeare?

by Joe Sobran

Before I discovered Shakespeare, the writer I most admired was St. Thomas Aquinas. Dazzling as Shakespeare is, I think I was right the first time. Apples and oranges, of course; but in this case I think the apple diet would have been better for me.

Many, not all of them Catholics, regard Aquinas as the most profound thinker of whom we have record. I'm not qualified to judge that; I'd be like Mr. Magoo judging a beauty contest.

I can't even call myself a Thomist. I dabbled in his writings in my teens, when I converted to Catholicism. But it was enough to give me a taste of his austere joy in contemplation.

I've just been reading some recent theological controversies, and how I wished St. Thomas could have stepped in to settle them. The disputes were full of vigorous, thought-provoking arguments; but the arguments were also adulterated by overstatements, imprecision, and even personal accusations. The phrase odium theologicum sprang to mind. And in some cases the disputants hadn't taken the preliminary step of defining their terms.

A New Dark Age

by Bradley J. Birzer, TIC co-editor

There are days and, then, there are days.

In 1948, T.S. Eliot assumed that western civilization moved inexorably toward a new dark age. “We can assert with some confidence that our own period is one of decline,” he lamented. “The standards of culture are lower than they were fifty years ago; and the evidences of this decline are visible in every department of human activity.”

One can only shake his head in wonder and bewilderment at what Eliot might write in 2012.

In the elite world of affairs, the powerful steal more and more through the machinery of politics, depriving us not only of liberty but, of course, of justice. There is, in no real sense, neither liberty nor order, internally or externally.

Self-Government Requires Self-Governing Citizens

During the first four decades of the American Republic, the irascible William Findley was the leading state politician of the Western Pennsylvania backcountry. He had seen action as a captain in the American Army during the Revolution, was an outspoken Antifederalist during the state's ratifying convention, and was a persistent critic of both state and national public finances. Many a high-born Philadelphian of the likes of Robert Morris and James Wilson, crossed swords with William Findley, only to come away with a healthy respect for his tenacity and shrewd political sense. It came as little surprise that Findley would write the definitive critique of the first administration's handling of the western counties' resistance to the federal excise tax on whiskey in the early 1790s. In that work Findley felt compelled to remind his readers that America was not great because of those in power or because of its “privileged orders,” but derived its “dignity and importance, through the natural and honorable channels of prudence and industry.” These were not political qualities, but social values of individual responsibility and integrity. Government in America was not their source. They sprang from the people through their own private and civil associations. But when government exercised power badly it threatened to break up those “natural and honorable channels.” State and society were not the same. It was not so long ago that this distinction was still part of the American understanding. 

Russell Kirk Would Have Been A Great Headmaster

by Robert M. Woods

Russell Kirk

With all the noise of recent months in the media about getting rid of Liberal Arts at certain colleges and universities in place of more "practical," or as the ancients would have classified it, "technical training for slaves," there comes a time to respond. But we begin with a defense of the barbarian position for a moment. Much of what passes in the name of Liberal Arts should be banished as it was never worthy of study. While one may enjoy the longest running animated series in television history, it really is not worthy of deep attention and three hours university credit. Or one may be obsessed with the most recent academic fad and desire to get a major in it through the "Liberal Arts Dept." I fear to mention one as tomorrow it will likely be different. Actually, it will likely be different in fifteen minutes.

If one is considering the value of a Liberal Arts education on the high school or college level, it would be most helpful to articulate exactly what a liberal arts education really is or should be. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Among the very fine explanations of what a Liberal Arts education is and should be, Russell Kirk's The Conservative Purpose of a Liberal Education is to be considered. In truth, if adhered to, this little essay may go a long way in helping us avoid the way of Babel Technical Institute.

James Madison and the Dynamics of the Constitutional Convention

by Lance Banning

Studies of the Constitutional Convention, both "empirical" and more "impressionistic," almost always emphasize its multiplex divisions: small states vs. large, "pure" federalists against proponents of a large republic, planting states against commercial interests, south against north. There is no denying the necessity of close attention to these conflicts. The Convention was a battleground for disagreeing politicians and competing state and sectional concerns. It succeeded, as the textbooks say, because the clashing delegates discovered ways to compromise their sharpest disagreements. Analyses of its divisions have taught us much of what we know about the way in which the document emerged.[1]

For all its benefits, however, there are also ways in which a fascination with conflicting coalitions may have interfered with insight and imparted partial and misleading images of how the meeting worked. I do not merely mean that a repeated emphasis on conflicts and divisions can encourage a neglect of the cooperative dimensions of the meeting (though this, of course, has sometimes been the case).[2] I mean to call attention also to another sense in which we have repeatedly applied a static method of analysis to a dynamic situation and thereby missed a major aspect of the story.

Champions of Modern Civilization

I also see gentle and virtuous men whose pure mores, quiet habits, opulence, and talents fit them to be leaders of those who dwell around them. Full of sincere patriotism, they would make great sacrifices for their country; nonetheless they are often adversaries of civilization; they confound its abuses with its benefits; and in their minds the idea of evil is indissolubly linked with that of novelty. Besides these, there are others whose object is to make men materialists, to find out what is useful without concern for justice, to have science quite without belief and prosperity without virtue. Such men are called champions of modern civilization, and they insolently put themselves at its head, usurping a place which has been abandoned to them, though they are utterly unworthy of it. Where are we, then? Men of religion fight against freedom, and lovers of liberty attack religions; noble and generous spirits praise slavery, while low, servile minds preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are the enemies of all progress, while men without patriotism or morals make themselves the apostles of civilization and enlightenment.--Alexis de Tocqueville

I Get By With A Little Help From My "Friends"

by Julie Robison

As a woman, I constantly need to be rescued. I can't say no. I do what I want, and if I can't, someone better give me the means to do it anyways. I am completely free and liberated!

Wait, what?

I know what you're thinking: since when did liberation mean total dependence on the government?

Since... now! Welcome to 2012, baby! My name is Julie, not Julia, and I don't approve of this plan. Enjoy the show folks, and don't forget that your tax dollars paid for this govertisment.

The Truth of Beauty: Educating the Moral Imagination

by Benjamin G. Lockerd, Jr.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

(Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”)

These famous lines of Keats have charmed and delighted readers for nearly two centuries, but skeptics have scoffed at his claim, especially as beauty is well known to be wholly subjective, a value found only “in the eye of the beholder.” Even those of us who are inclined to agree with the poet’s bold statement have been known to wonder whether this is really all we need to know. Surely we must add at least two other categories to the formula, for philosophers have long considered three subjects of contemplation to be paramount: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. These topics give rise to the three prime branches of philosophy: metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. All three of these are considered by many people today purely relativistic concepts, and one of the goals of the Catholic educator must be to contradict the prevailing relativism, which is practically taken for granted even by many Catholic students, since, as T. S. Eliot says, secularism today “holds all the most valuable advertising space.”

In my experience, these students are more likely to grant me metaphysical claims than claims about morality and beauty. If I say that the universe is not merely atoms and void, not merely matter, they tend to agree. It becomes more contentious if I say that there are universal moral truths. If I give as an example the claim that it is always wrong to enslave another person, they will readily agree, but if I say it is wrong (on essentially the same principle) to use human embryos for scientific research, I will have an argument with some. If I say that it is also wrong (still largely for the same reason) to bring about the conception of a human being in a laboratory in order to help an infertile couple have a child, I may meet with incredulity or even be denounced as a heartless disbeliever in the sanctity of motherhood.

The Real Founding: Long Gone

by Bradley J. Birzer, TIC co-editor

George Mason

Last week, I had the privilege of lecturing on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Passed unanimously by Congress in New York on July 13, 1787, this law never ceases to inspire me. As our own venerable John Willson has argued many times, it is, quite possibly, the most impressive republican law ever passed. Protecting religious freedom and common law rights, it also called for good relations with the American Indian, for a prohibition of slavery north and west of the Ohio River, and for the prevention of empire as the republic expanded West. My favorite provision is the untempered defense of property rights in the second article:

And, in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood and declared, that no law ought ever to be made, or have force in the said territory, that shall, in any manner whatever, interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, bona fide, and without fraud, previously formed.

Contrast this for a moment with what the French Revolutionaries passed only two years later in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, article III:

The source of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body, no individual can exercise authority that does not explicitly proceed from it.

At first reading, the second article of the Northwest Ordinance appears to be a statement about mere possession. I own this; it’s mine; leave it alone; I obtained it through good faith; back off.

The Map of Human Character

by Will Durant

“History” said Henry Ford, “is bunk.” As one who has written history for twenty-five years, and studied it for forty-five, I should largely agree with the great engineer who put half the world on wheels. History as studied in schools – history as a dreary succession of dates and kings, of politics and wars, of the rise and fall of states – this kind of history is verily a weariness of the flesh, stale and flat and unprofitable. No wonder so few students in school are drawn to it; no wonder so few of us learn any lessons from the past.

But history as man’s rise from savagery to civilization – history as the record of the lasting contributions made to man’s knowledge, wisdom, arts, morals, manners, skills – history as a laboratory rich in a hundred thousand experiments in economics, religion, literature, science, and government – history as our roots and our illumination, as the road by which we came and the only light that can clarify the present and guide us into the future – that kind of history is not “bunk;” it is, as Napoleon said on St. Helena, “the only true philosophy and the only true psychology.” Other studies may tell us how man might behave, or how he should behave; history tells us how he has behaved for six thousand years. One who knows that record is in large measure protected in advance against the delusions and disillusionments of his time. He has learned the limitations of human nature, and bears with equanimity the faults of his neighbors and the imperfections of states. He shares hopefully in the reforming enterprises of his age and people; but his heart does not break, nor his faith in life fade out, when he perceives how modest are the results, and how persistently man remains what he has been for sixty centuries, perhaps for a thousand generations.

The Reserved Powers of the Tenth Amendment

by Marshall DeRosa

The Tenth Amendment and State Sovereignty: Constitutional History and Contemporary Issues, Mark R. Killenbeck (Editor)

The Tenth Amendment can best be described as the last visible battlefield breastwork of the constitutional struggle between the forces of centralization and those of localism. But just as military advances have made nineteenth-century earthen breastworks mostly obsolete, so, too, have developments in American jurisprudence eviscerated the protective qualities of the Tenth Amendment. Justice Holmes advanced the evisceration of the Tenth Amendment in 1920, when he adjudicated a conflict between a 1916 treaty and a Missouri law. He postulated: “The treaty in question does not contravene any prohibitory words to be found in the Constitution. The only question is whether it is forbidden by some invisible radiation from the general terms of the Tenth Amendment. We must consider what this country has become in deciding what that Amendment has reserved” (Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416).

Quote of the Day: Will Durant

“Civilization is social order promoting cultural creation. Four elements constitute it: economic provision, political organization, moral tradition, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. It begins where chaos and insecurity end. For when fear is overcome, curiosity and constructiveness are free, and man passes by natural impulse towards the understanding and embellishment of life.” (Will Durant, Story of Civilization, pg 1, vol. 1)

The Voice of This Calling: The Enduring Legacy of T.S. Eliot

by Clinton A. Brand

In 1953, the first edition of The Conservative Mind was subtitled From Burke to Santayana; the second and every edition thereafter bore the subtitle From Burke to Eliot. Not only did this adjustment afford Kirk a bookend better consisting with Burke, but the change was also fortuitous as one element of a broader clarification of Kirk’s premise and purpose. For the second edition, Kirk enlarged his discussion of Eliot, and he also recast the final chapter, changing its final section from one called “The plan of action for American conservatives” to one entitled “The conservative as poet.” Thus, Kirk emphasized formally an argument that runs throughout his book—that the most vital expressions of conservative thought are not to be measured so much by effective political activity as by their reflection in the tradition of humane letters, particularly in those writers who (to borrow Kirk’s habitual wording) furnished anew the wardrobe of the moral imagination.

In T. S. Eliot, Kirk found just such an exemplar of thoughtful conservatism informed by an acute literary sensibility. Perhaps more importantly, in selecting Eliot as something of a latter-day counterpart to Burke—certainly as a figure more substantial than Santayana and one still living at the time of his writing—Kirk was looking ahead, beyond the tradition of thought he had surveyed, to identify possible models and resources for cultivating the “Conservatives’ Promise,” as he titled his concluding chapter. The golden anniversary of the original publication of The Conservative Mind offers an occasion to reassess that promise and to suggest what the legacy of T. S. Eliot has to offer another generation as we work the fields of a different cultural landscape, venturing to renew what Eliot called “The life of significant soil.”[1]

Russell Kirk and the Swords of Imagination

by Darrin Moore

The battle for our future is being fought within the imaginations of men. This has always been so. Russell Kirk explained: “All great systems, ethical or political, attain their ascendency over the minds of men by virtue of their appeal to the imagination; and when they cease to touch the chords of wonder and mystery and hope, their power is lost, and men look elsewhere for some set of principles by which they may be guided.” Today, with atheistic secular humanitarianism large and in charge, many fear that we may fall prey to immoral forces; avarice, envy and tyranny.

Being encoded by our Creator with free will, human beings have the capacity for both great good and horrendous evil. Man can rise to the level just below angels or sink to the depths just above the animals. Whether he slides into degraded savagery or soars with elegant eagles depends on his reasoning and his will–and these are shaped by his imagination. The ‘moral imagination’ is, in Kirk’s phrase, “a man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely from day to day, or rather from moment to moment, as dogs do. It is a strange faculty—inexplicable if men are assumed to have an animal nature only—of discerning greatness, justice, and order, beyond the bars of appetite and self-interest.” Chuck Colson added, “The moral imagination is more than rational, it is poetic, stirring long-atrophied faculties for nobility, compassion and virtue. . . It begins with awe, reverence and appreciation for order within creation. It sees the value of tradition, revelation, family, and community, and responds with duty, commitment and dedication.”

The Third Way: Wilhelm Röpke’s Vision of Social Order

by Ralph E. Ancil

More and more people no longer know what it means to put first things first and to think in terms of the principles involved. Consequently, only very few still have a real philosophy which separates the essential from the accidental and which puts everything in its place. We lost sight of the real ends while becoming entangled in the means.--Wilhelm Röpke

Wilhelm Röpke is well known in conservative circles for his work on the extra-economic foundations of the free market. But more broadly Röpke was concerned with the overall social malaise of the modern age, a concern triggered by his experience of the first World War and its aftermath in Germany. He became alarmed at the disintegration of important relationships, of those ways of life and institutions that are vital to the survival of Western civilization, if it is not to succumb to collectivism, socialism, and totalitarianism. He thought of the West as suffering from a marasmus of the body, a weakening due to self-consumption. In short, he believed that the West was squandering its spiritual inheritance.

Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton?

by Clyde N. Wilson

Friends, you must have either Jefferson or Hamilton. All the fundamental conflicts in our history were adumbrated during the first decade of the General Government in the contest symbolized by these two men. Hamilton lost in the short run, but triumphed in the long run. He would find much that is agreeable in the present American regime - plutocratic kritarchy which we persist, by long habit of self-deception, in calling democracy. But Thomas Jefferson would not be at all happy with what has happened to this country; he might even suggest that the time had come for a little revolution. The host of petty intellectuals and pundits, elitists, and would-be elitists - tame scribblers of the American Empire - sense this, and so Jefferson must be dealt with appropriately. The Establishment is frightened by the rumblings they hear from the Great Beast (that is, we the American people). They are shocked to realize that Jefferson honestly did believe in the people; that he believed the soundest basis for government to be popular consent and a severely limited government.

Popular Government and Intemperate Minds: Democracy As Ideology

by Russell Kirk

At the beginning of the twentieth century, few states in the world could be called democratic. Yet much personal and local freedom existed under the reign of law.

Near the close of the twentieth century, nearly every political regime throughout the world professes to be democratic. Yet in many lands, personal and local freedom has been extirpated.

On the face of things, it appears that the triumph of democracy, far from preserving or enlarging freedom, has brought to power a host of squalid oligarchs.

The Lost Art of Speaking

by Joe Sobran

Not long ago, I read that Hollywood is worried about a shortage of young male stars who can play big roles. I'm not surprised.

And I think I can give the chief reason in a single word: voices.

Think of the great male stars of the past: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Fredric March, Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, William Powell, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles, Richard Burton, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, Montgomery Clift. They weren't all pretty boys, though Cooper, Grant, Colman, Olivier, Peck, and Clift were extraordinarily good-looking; but they all had memorable voices. You can't picture them without recalling how they sounded. Nothing conveys personality so fully as the voice.

When Greeks Bear Gifts: On Economy, Philosophy and Freedom

by Jose Maria Yulo

"To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed." —Marcus Cato The Elder

"Didst thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil." —Fyodor Dostoevsky

A particularly insightful student once queried after a class had ended: "How did Rome become Italy?"

The Aim of Every Political Constitution

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.

The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.

– James Madison, Federalist No. 57, "The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation," New York Packet, February 19, 1788

The Spirit of American Constitutionalism: John Dickinson's Fabius Letters

by Gregory S. Ahern

Though virtually ignored by scholars in recent decades, John Dickinson was one of the most influential of the American Founders. When he entered the Pennsylvania State House in May 1787, as Delaware’s delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he was one of the most knowledgeable and experienced statesmen to attend the Grand Convention. Colonial legislator, "Penman of the Revolution," colonel in the state militia during the War of Independence, drafter of the Articles of Confederation, member of the Stamp Act, Continental, and Confederation Congresses, and chief executive of two states—few other men could boast of similar achievements. In his character sketches of the delegates, William Pierce observed that Dickinson "will ever be considered one of the most important characters in the United States."[1]

Pat Buchanan on Suicide of a Superpower

Below is an excellent interview with Pat Buchanan on his book Suicide of a Superpower.

The Inspired Wisdom of Burke

by George A. Panichas

Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered, by Russell Kirk, with a Foreword by Roger Scruton, Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997.

Russell Kirk’s book on Edmund Burke, first published in 1967, now revised and handsomely re-issued, testifies not only to the “enduring Burke,” but also to the enduring Kirk. As a British statesman and political philosopher of “inspired wisdom,” Burke (1729-1797) continues to address our time and condition. And as an American man of letters, Kirk (1918-1994) fully possesses the critical and sapiential acumen-and the sympathy of vision-to elucidate Burke’s life and thought. In essence this book serves an introduction to the meaning and importance of Burke’s achievement. Indeed Kirk’s book, in its clarity of expression, its illumination of ideas, its cogency of organization and development, exemplifies standards that a critical study, if it is to have lasting value, has to satisfy. At the same time, its conveyed insight and wisdom make it far more than an introduction, and give it an added critical dimension. Unpretentious and straightforward, and with an impelling honesty of approach and interpretation, this book has the wonderful ability to guide a reader through the most significant and intricate avenues of Burke’s contribution.

Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education

by Stratford Caldecott

The sequel to Beauty for Truth's Sake has been published by Angelico Press. Called Beauty in the Word, it completes the retrieval of the seven liberal arts begun in the earlier book by examining the first three, the "Trivium", which Dorothy L. Sayers made the basis of Classical Education in her famous essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning." But this book tries to go further than Sayers.

New opportunities for school reform, and the creation of Academy schools and Free schools comparable to American Charter schools, encourage radical thinking about education. We need a philosophy that can guide us as we found these new schools, or enrich and improve existing schools, or attempt to design a curriculum for teaching our children at home. The curriculum has become fragmented and incoherent because we have lost any sense of how all knowledge fits together. What kind of education would enable a child to progress in the rational understanding of the world without losing a sense of the whole, or a sense of the sacred? We must make an effort to overcome in ourselves false ideas inculcated by the education that we ourselves received, before we can understand the elements that would make a better education possible for our children.

After the Revolution

by Patrick J. Buchanan

“Democracy … arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects,” said Aristotle.

But if the Philosopher disliked the form of government that arose out of the fallacy of human equality, the Founding Fathers detested it.

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,” said Thomas Jefferson, “where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.” James Madison agreed, “Democracy is the most vile form of government.” Their Federalist rivals concurred.

“Democracy,” said John Adams, “never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

The Christian Humanist View of Being Human in the Renaissance

by Robert M. Woods

In the history of ideas, there are ideas that need to be rescued from those who should know better, but simply do not.  For example, all the false views about the Middle Ages. Way too many to even get started in this blog.  Interestingly, even the Renaissance has its share of misreadings.  There are some Christians who look to blame all the ills of the modern world on the Renaissance.  If you look long enough, one discovers those who see the roots of secularization in the Renaissance or the foundation of modern atheism in the Renaissance.  While ideas do have consequences, one should be extra careful on blaming an age, person,or book for the woes of later generations.  One extremely helpful reader on this is The Renaissance Philosophy of Man: Petrarca, Valla, Ficino, Pico, Pomponazzi, and Vives edited by Ernest Cassier and Paul Oskar Kristeller. This volume is a fine place to start before moving onto the entire longer works of these authors.

The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson

by James W. Ely, Jr.

The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson by David N. Mayer,  University Press of Virginia, 1994    

Thomas Jefferson continues to fascinate scholars. A voluminous literature examines his long public career and extensive comments on political issues. Historians have shown particular interest in exploring the elusive philosophical underpinnings of Jefferson’s political persuasions. David N. Mayer makes a valuable contribution to this debate with his comprehensive study of Jefferson’s constitutional principles as they matured from the 1760s to the 1820s.

Mayer identifies three sources that shaped Jefferson’s thinking about constitutional questions. From the English Whig tradition, Jefferson derived the notion of a constitution as a check on the power of government in order to protect individual rights. The federal aspect of his thought emphasized the division of governmental authority into state and national spheres, each of which was further divided into distinct executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Jefferson also gave special weight to the republican character of government, in which governmental authority rested on popular sovereignty and majority rule. Mayer points out that Jefferson’s constitutionalism developed over time and was often influenced by the course of political events. Rejecting criticism that Jefferson as president did not always act in conformity with his previously articulated views, the author maintains that Jefferson’s use of power was remarkably consistent with his constitutional theory.

It is Our Duty to Leave Liberty to Our Posterity

Honor, justice and humanity call upon us to hold and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty, which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children; but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty can exceed our own if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, entitled to its blessings and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them; the experience of all states mournfully demonstrating to us that when arbitrary power has been established over them, even the wisest and bravest nations that ever flourished have, in a few years, degenerated into abject and wretched vassals.

--John Dickinson, A New Essay by the Pennsylvania Farmer, 1774

Mr. Shakespeare’s Plays: On Essays and Letters

by James V. Schall, S.J.

Under the listings of Shakespeare, the Internet abounds in essays, reviews, texts, and comments, almost anything one can imagine about his works and about works explaining his works. My Viking Edition of Shakespeare comes to 1,471 pages. I suspect that at least that number of pages of new materials about Shakespeare appears almost every month. In various universities, moreover, from here to India, we can find listed courses on “Shakespeare and . . . —You Name It.” Something is found on every topic and Shakespearean personage from love to war, from atheism to biblical citations, from Sir John Falstaff to Iago, and from Cordelia to Julius Caesar. A student who wants to write an essay on any given play or character of Shakespeare can call up any number of already composed essays. The only thing that prevents him from turning them in as his own is his conscience.

With a class every semester, I myself read Allan Bloom’s Shakespeare’s Politics. “Shakespeare and War” courses appear in various curricula. Out of curiosity, I checked Google to see if a course entitled, “Shakespeare’s Biology” was listed. I was rather relieved not to find one, though some close calls were evident. One entry was entitled “The Biology of Love,” reputedly about “the effects of love on the chemical state of the brain.” This description is enough to make us hope that we never fall in love, but the lady author enthusiastically assures us, “I mean, I love Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

Conservative?

by Stratford Caldecott

G.K. Chesterton was once described as a "Conservative" thinker. He responded as follows:

"Because I want almost anything that doesn't yet exist; because I want to turn a silent people into a singing people; because I would rejoice if a wineless country could be a wine-growing country; because I would change a world of wage-slaves into a world of freeholders; because I would have healthy employment instead of hideous unemployment; because I wish folk, now ruled by other people's fads, to be ruled by their own laws and liberties; becuase I hate the established dirt and hate more the established cleanliness; because, in short, I want to alter nearly everything there is, a cursed, haughty, high-souled, well-informed, world-worrying, sky-scraping, hair-spliting, head-splitting, academic animal of a common quill-driving social reformer gets up and calls me a Conservative! Excuse me!"

The word "conservative" should, in fact, never be used without a public health warning – or at least without careful definition. Its opposite, "liberal", is no better.

A Teaching for [r]epublicans: Roman History and the Nation’s First Identity

by M. E. Bradford

The Federal District of Columbia, both in its formal character as a capital and also in its self-conscious attempt at a certain visual splendor, is, for every visitor from the somewhat sovereign states, a reminder that the analogy of ancient Rome had a formative effect upon those who conceived and designed it as their one strictly national place. What our fathers called Washington City is thus, at one and the same time, a symbol of their common political aspirations and a specification of the continuity of those objectives with what they knew of the Roman experience. So are we all informed with the testimony of the eye, however we construe the documentary evidence of original confederation. So say the great monuments, the memorials, the many public buildings and the seat of government itself. So the statuary placed at the very center of the Capitol of the United States. And much, much more.

Power Under the Constitution will Always be in the People

The power under the Constitution will always be in the People. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own chusing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their Interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their Servants can, and undoubtedly will be, recalled.-George Washington (to Bushrod Washington, 9 November 1787)