Hollow Men and the Search for a Workable Pluralism

by | Feb 9, 2014

The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief by George M. Marsden. Basic Books, 2014. Hardcover, 264 pp. $27. Randall Jarrell once observed that “The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow...

The Rebirth of a Christian State

by | Feb 9, 2014

The Byzantine Revival, 780–842, by Warren Treadgold. Stanford University Press, 1988, 504 pp., $49.50. In the year 146 B.C. Scipio Aemilianus, adopted grandson of the conqueror of Hannibal and son of the conqueror of Macedonia, watched Rome’s great enemy, Carthage,...

Pop Culture Mysticism

by | Feb 2, 2014

So that’s it then, I thought, standing in the darkness. I’m a Catholic conservative, and the most dynamic expression of my faith is pop culture. Being what I call a conservative pop-culture mystic is why I rejected liberalism, and also why I never have fully fit in...

Conservatism and Decline

by | Feb 2, 2014

The Conservative Mind, from Burke to Eliot by Russell Kirk. Fifth revised edition. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1973. In 1902, from somewhere on Regent Street, my mother watched Edward VII’s coronation parade. As she saw this gold and scarlet pageant drawn from the...