Joseph Stalin, who waged many battles against facts in his time, still had occasion to lament that “facts are obstinate things.”

Essays of the Week

False Idols? Looking at America’s Founders With a Clear Eye by John Grove Rather than tactfully recognizing the failings and limitations of our founders, conservatives have developed a tendency to deny that they ever possessed those faults. Furious defenses are mounted to show that all Founders were virulently anti-slavery, possessed no limited or parochial views, and were never influenced by personal advantage. The greatest tragedy of America’s past is that racism was present not only in its worst villains, but also in some of its greatest public figures. We cannot debase the positive contributions of those who had moral failings, but we also cannot idolize the American Founders under the false pretension that vice did not exist alongside virtue... [MORE] C.S. Lewis and the Cultivation of the Imagination by Corey Latta C.S. Lewis’ imagination remained the product of a voracious reading life. But the scholar, apologist, and fantasy writer didn’t just read widely; he read well. Because the imagination was formed by an act of reception, it conceived from what it received. What the imagination takes in, it gives out. As Lewis saw it, bad books make for poor imaginative fodder. Lewis lived by this principle. Both his published works and his personal correspondence testify that the long bookish corridors of Lewis’ mind stayed well-shelved with those works that bolstered his ability to make myth, convey meaning, and create beauty...  [MORE] Did Medieval Medicine Ever Work? by John Horvat It all began as one of those Friday afternoon projects that medical researchers sometimes do to satisfy curiosity. No one expected it to work. The researchers were testing medieval medical remedies by replicating a 1000-year-old recipe for an eye salve. They were prepared to see it prove that medieval medicine was backward and even superstitious. When the results came back, they were shocked to find that the recipe was incredibly effective in killing staph infections. Indeed, the medieval salve was actually a powerful antibiotic. Perhaps such studies might broaden into other fields, helping bring to light and build a deeper appreciation for the glories of Christian civilization that were suppressed... [MORE] The Sacred Fire of Liberty:  James Madison and the Founding by William Watkins Historians have painted James Madison as a young centralizer and nationalist who later defected to the philosophy of states’ rights and strict construction of the Constitution. Madison was also accused of philosophical apostasy by his contemporaries. Alexander Hamilton, his collaborator on The Federalist, bitterly complained that after 1789 Madison was “seduced by the expectation of popularity” in Virginia and thus opposed his former allies. Madison’s political thought, however, is much more complicated than critics and historians would have us believe. In The Sacred Fire of Liberty, Lance Banning attempts to demonstrate that Madison did not change horses in midstream, but rather acted consistently throughout his career...  [MORE] Who Reads Robert Nisbet Anymore? by Darrell Falconburg In The Quest for Community, Robert Nisbet wove together a historical narrative, beginning in the medieval world and continuing to the twentieth century. In the Middle Ages, Nisbet found, the yearning for community was satisfied by a series of small-scale intermediate institutions: immediate and extended families, gilds, churches, villages, monasteries, and manors. However, as history marched onward—through Renaissance, Reformation, and Revolution—intermediary institutions and communities came to be attacked as superstitious, patriarchal, and old-fashioned. The individual would gain his freedom and be freed from the shackles of tradition, progressives thought, by breaking them down through means of the centralized State...  [MORE] To Hone One Mind Against the Gritty Stone of Another by Gleaves Whitney “Small talk eludes me, Mr. Whitney. I loathe chitchat," Professor Stephen Tonsor told me. "What is more, too many academics drown their students in a deluge of verbiage and cant. But I hope you will come to visit regularly during office hours. Conversation is one of the most important aspects of education. To hone one mind against the gritty stone of another is the surest path to intellectual excellence." I found this unusual first conversation with my “prickly” advisor gritty enough. But soon we were talking about a great nineteenth-century historian, the first principles of a European Liberal, and what it all meant to an American conservative. Scarcely did I realize how much I would learn about Tonsor himself – a difficult man who was a contradiction to his age...  [MORE] From Myths to Fact and Back Again by Alexander Zubatov Joseph Stalin, who waged many battles against facts in his time, still had occasion to lament that “facts are obstinate things.” If Stalin were around today, he would certainly have far less reason to voice any such lamentation. The would-be totalitarian dictator in our contemporary world does not have to work quite as hard to stave off any single entrenched factual paradigm. When reliable authorities no longer hold sway, unscrupulous authoritarians can step in to fill the void. A democratic society requires an informed base of voters making political judgments on the basis of commonly accepted information. A totalitarian society can do without that luxury. For the dictator, the despot and the theocrat, facts are obstacles to be overcome. With every year that passes, we seem to be erecting fewer and fewer such obstacles...  [MORE] Little Miss Frankenstein: A Teenage Girl Caught in the Culture of Death Irving Babbitt: An Act of Reparation Edmund Burke: Old Whig Why Mysticism Is Not an Option The Catholic Church & the Jews: What is the True Story? George Scott-Moncrieff on Christian Holiness Bruce Timm’s Batman: Virtue in a Fallen World Learning How to See Again “Dark August”