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Articles 356

What You Need to Know About Bernard Lonergan, S. J.

From the distance of 750 years, Thomas Aquinas can seem quite the stodgy fellow—not just old school but the old school. One needs to look a little closer to realize…

An Imaginary Conservatism: The Realists vs. the Romantics

Reprinted from Ethika Politika Michael Hannon has made a serious attempt to deal with the disputes between the “capitalist” and “anti-capitalist” conservatives, and such a serious attempt deserves a serious…

The Rhetoric of War Powers

I suppose we have the Constitution we deserve--but we could fight for the one we had.
Katherine Dalton
September 24, 2013

What You Need to Know About Dwight Macdonald

Dwight Macdonald was one of the twentieth century’s great public intellectuals. American culture was Macdonald’s specialty, including government. A journalist by trade, Macdonald’s first professional job was writing for Time…

Conservatism: What’s Wrong with it and How Can We Make it Right?

This is my contribution to ISI’s symposium, Conservatism: What’s Wrong with it and How Can We Make it Right? In one sense, there is nothing wrong with conservatism. The principles…
Mark T. Mitchell
September 18, 2013

History as Parable

History is never merely history.
Jason Peters
September 18, 2013

What You Need to Know About Jane Jacobs

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing-- say Pimlico... It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut…

What You Need to Know about Paul Gottfried

Paul Gottfried is among the most important contemporary conservative thinkers. An intellectual historian, since the 1980s Gottfried has been the foremost critic of American conservatism from the perspective of someone…

What You Need to Know About Wilhelm Röpke

This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…

What You Need to Know About Michel Foucault

This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…
September 8, 2013

Community among Academics: An Economist’s Retrospective

Two weeks ago I spoke to an orientation program for new faculty at Pepperdine. I shared with them what I had been told at my new faculty orientation nineteen years…
September 6, 2013

What You Need to Know About Mozart

This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…
September 5, 2013

Life Under Compulsion: The Minotaur

When we lose the sense of transcendence, when in our hearts and minds the things of time are no longer oriented toward eternity, then, writes Jacques Maritain in The Range…
September 3, 2013

What You Need to Know About Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…

On Killing (Chickens)

Hidden Springs Lane. Last weekend the deed was done. Having acquired 25 chicks in the spring (they were free) it soon became clear that this was, as they say, a…
Mark T. Mitchell
August 26, 2013

What You Need to Know About Henry David Thoreau

This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…

The REPEALicans and the GOP’s Secret Hope

In what passes for political humor these days, Nancy Pelosi has ridiculed the GOP as the “REPEALicans.” She did so in response to the House Republicans’ fortieth vote to repeal…

Nourishing America

In a recently popular documentary, Rosie, a 5th-grader from a small town in Colorado, describes how she often goes to bed with an empty pit in her stomach. Sometimes the…

What You Need to Know About Hans Urs von Balthasar

This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…

The 3% Solution, the Cruz Gambit, the Full Rubio, and the Neo-Neocons

The advantage of being out of power is that it gives a political party time to think and reflect. Better yet, it gives a party the opportunity to fight, and…

What You Need to Know About Yvor Winters

This is the first entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about…

Thoughts on Elshtain

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Jean Bethke Elshtain, a profound and important political theorist and ethicist, died yesterday I was lucky enough to have met her perhaps a handful of…
August 13, 2013

In Search of the Real Coolidge

Our interest in historical subjects says as much about our society as about the subjects themselves.  The growing interest in the life, thought and presidency of Calvin Coolidge issues from…

“Monogamish”: Marriage in the Age of Caucus Races

Berwyn, PA. While the American President is appearing on late-night television to tell the world -- and the Russians -- that a permissive attitude toward homosexual behavior is a matter…