Writers & Poets

C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism

This is Part I of a III Part series on C.S. Lewis and Statism. The series originally appeared at the Independent Institute. See part...

For Lack of a Hardier Knickerbocker, the Republic Goes Tilt

Washington, Ct. Classics are called such for a reason. They endure. Quite by accident frequently, for as any condemned intellectual knows, the most marketable idea...

Norman Maclean and the Question of Craft

"Fear and pity are made out of grammar,” he writes, and in this most particular grammatical unit he finds the fabric of tragedy itself.

Graced Grit: A Hymn-laced Eulogy to True Grit Author Charles Portis

U.S. Marshal Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn and Mattie bring a type of vigilante justice to Tom Chaney, and we are glad, but Portis doesn’t allow us to be easy about it. There is always a poison fit for the avenger, even if she is a mere child.

Three Conceptions: Laschian, Romantic, and Immaculate

Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home -- "Intimations of Immortality," William...

A Note on Right, Left, and Lasch at the Present Time

If Lasch couldn't express a way for leftists and localists to speak the same language, perhaps no one can.

On Place, Permanence, and Microbrews

“It is a pleasure to carry out one’s duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card...

My Kind of General

The great '60s-'70s R&B singer General Johnson has died. The pacific General wrote the antiwar and pro-home anthem "Bring the Boys Home"

Science, Self-Deification, and Gnosticism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" provides a springboard for reflecting on the problems of scientism, especially the temptation to self-deification and, what Eric Voegelin terms, modern Gnosticism.

Christian Democratic Communities and Teleological States: A Response to God’s Economy

If your religion--or at least your concept of the moral norms of the civil order--lacks a notion of grace, it therefore also lacks a notion of gifts; all it can say is that some people are lucky, not that some people are blessed.