Knight of Truth

A eulogy for Russell Kirk.As we remember Russell Kirk, the author of an astonishing number of publications, the source of a new idea in American political life, the preserver and distributor of many treasures Of culture that without him would have slipped into the...

First Principles: Remedy for a Nation at Risk

This April occurs the tenth anniversary of the now historic educational report A Nation at Risk. A flurry of activity from educators, editors, and legislators came as a result of that document, which stated “The ideal of academic excellence as the primary goal of...

In Praise of Latin

We never forget our Latin teacher, it has often been said. How true it is for others of my generation, I cannot say, but I most assuredly remember mine. In our small high school, situated in the remote Adirondack mountain fastness of northern New York, we had an...

Universities: American, European, Third World

The literature and documentation of our educational decline have grown enormously in the last quarter-century, but we have now reached the moment when we may see education in perspective. Perspective in this case means the retrospective and prospective glance—but also...

Robert Nisbet and the Idea of Community

A “Best of the Bookman” essay from 1978 discusses Robert Nisbet’s understanding of community and in particular his reading of the great sociologists on the subject of the severe and even pathological isolation of the individual in modern society. By Fred Donovan...

The Oracle of the South

The Essential Calhoun: Selections from Writings, Speeches, and Letters. Edited with an Introduction by Clyde Wilson. Foreword by Russell Kirk. Transaction Publishers (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903), 436 pp., $32.95. The contemporary academic...