The Tolstoy Locomotive on the Berlin Track
Twenty-seven years ago, in 1953, at the height of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, a short essay by an Oxford don produced a swiftly swelling wave of praise among public thinkers and intellectuals, elevating its writer to a situation of...Five Faces of Death
Love Is Stronger than Death by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius Press, 1992; originally published in 1979), 121 pages. It might well be expected that a book on death and how we view it would be gloomy and depressing. But Peter Kreeft’s Love Is Stronger than Death, recommended...Beyond Tolstoy’s Legend: Russia and the Defeat of Napoleon
Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace by Dominic Lieven. New York: Viking (2010), 656 pages. Historians face a challenge in finding something new and important in a familiar story. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 offers a case...unbought
A poor man, if he has dignity, honesty, the respect of his neighbors, a realization of his duties, a love of the wisdom of his ancestors, and possibly some taste for knowledge or beauty, is rich in the unbought grace of life.Imaginative Conservative
The Imaginative Conservative blog has been posting lots of great material by and about Russell Kirk, including Kirk’s reflection on the twelve days of Christmas, the 1953 review of The Conservative Mind from the New York Times, and a selection on the unbought...Books in Little
The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion by Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger (Ignatius Press, 85 pp.) Does the free state have pre-political moral foundations? This slim volume contains opposing answers to this question by Habermas, one of...What Is All This?
Russell Kirk presented this lecture as the 1986 Commencement Address at La Lumiere School. Once upon a time I was seated in an automobile passing rapidly along the broad highway that runs between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. My companion in the back seat was the very...The Long Twilight
On Essays and Letters“If we say that human civilization has existed for about a millionth of the age of this Galaxy, we may not be far wrong.” —Arthur C. Clarke, 1963. On every side, we are besieged with theories telling us that, due to man, we are depriving future...Conservatism in Germany
In Remembrance of Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing (1927–2009)The year 1968 not only marked the culmination of the students’ rebellion, but also the starting point for a conservative counter movement in Germany. Three developments were caused by this event: In 1970 Caspar...
There are metaphorical hills on which I would be willing to die. The Oxford comma is one of them.
So easy to forget that the best way to educate yourself is to read great works of literature and philosophy, then talk about them. Bring back the salon!