Conservatism is already appealing more and more to young people. Why?

Essays of the Week

Coming Home: Why Conservatism Appeals to Young People by Jake Scott Recent discussions about conservatism have wondered how it can appeal to young people. These discussions necessarily emphasize the liberating role of capitalism—referencing young people’s inherent social entrepreneurship, and desire for material enrichment—but I think this has missed the point in two ways. One, we live in a political world defined by post-materialism. Two, conservatism is already appealing more and more to young people. Why? Conservatism is at heart a philosophy of oikophilia, a way of helping people find a place—physically, spiritually, politically, socially—in an otherwise hostile world. The loss of identity in association with the decline of clear and strong institutions is remedied through adherence to historical, tried and tested authorities that offer a way of understanding social duty and, in return, provides us with an identity in relation to the rest of society. As we increasingly find ourselves, as young people, in a strange and foreign world, conservatism must become the philosophy of coming home... [MORE] Temperance & Abundance:  Romano Guardini’s Letters from Lake Como by Bradley J. Birzer It is worth remembering that God does not create halfway. In the New Testament, Christian Evangelists write of Jesus at Cana, creating not just the best wine, but so much that it is level with the brim of the cistern, and, in the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, creating more than the crowd needs. God’s creation is nothing short of astoundingly abundant. God does not just create: He creates that which can procreate. As true and humane artists we refashion creation only to the extent that it allows us to live more fully, more wholly, and more completely. It is not only good but to our benefit not to transcend the limitations of the good, the true, and the beautiful. When we begin to refashion things in our image rather than in God’s, we ourselves become displaced and disjointed. Strangely enough, by asserting only our humanity, we lose what makes us essentially and beautifully human. Such was what Romano Guardini saw in the transformation of Lake Como in the 1920s... [MORE] The Achievement of Russell Kirk by James E. Person, Jr. In speaking of imagination, any discussion of Russell Kirk must necessarily lead to a reference to the moral imagination, an expression he borrowed from Burke. The term “moral imagination” appears throughout Kirk’s works, but what does it mean? According to Kirk, it is the power of knowing man, despite his weaknesses and sinful nature, as a moral being, meant for eternity. It recognizes that human beings, after all, are created in the image of God. The moral imagination, wrote Kirk, “is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment to moment, as dogs do. It is the strange faculty—inexplicable if men are assumed to have an animal nature only—of discerning greatness, justice, and order, beyond the bars of appetite and self-interest”... [MORE] Sherlock Homeless by Joseph Pearce Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes lives in contemporary London, a place which is philosophically and demographically rootless, a place of ultimately meaningless transience, where nothing really matters. Everyone is homeless, devoid of any realities that clutch, and the whole of life seems to float in a computer-generated fake-reality, virtual and virtueless. The only things rooted in the real are the cold, hard facts that Holmes unearths as clues. Beyond these facts there is no truth. Nothing is definite. All is ambivalence. Nothing is beautiful. There’s only ugliness. We don’t see the sky. Nor do we see any living tree or plant. Nothing that grows and has life. Instead, we see only the walking dead. Holmes describes himself as “a high-functioning sociopath,” which makes him relatively normal because all the other characters are also sociopaths, albeit low-functioning ones... [MORE] Charles Lindbergh’s Philosophy of Vital Instinct by Pedro Gonzalez Charles Lindbergh begins Autobiography of Values by reflecting on the values that mold a person’s life, asking whether life is best lived by paying allegiance to reason or to vital instinct. For practical reasons, the act of balancing a life of reason with a life guided by vital instinct became more delicate after the Industrial Revolution.The heightened pace of life in industrial societies, Charles Lindbergh realized, necessitated reflection on what type of life is best suited for man. Which of the two, reason or vital instinct, constitutes the best function of human beings? Which of the two contributes best to man’s happiness and lasting well-being? This question is of crucial importance for Lindbergh, for the world-renowned pilot embarked on a life of scientific and technological discovery. Lindberg lived during a time that witnessed the explosion of mechanization in twentieth-century Western civilization. The life of the legendary aviator was marked by this quest... [MORE] The Last Jedi and the End of Heroism My Random, Bold Predictions for 2018 John Paul II, T.S. Eliot, and the Culture of Life Pray, Don’t Worry, Be Happy An Oration on the Scholar’s Mission The Importance of Educated Preaching Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Can We Have a Happy New Year? “We Europeans Are Christians”: Christmas Address 2017 “The Gloucestershire Wassail”: A Carol for Epiphany Eve “The Seven Joys of Mary” “Ring Out, Wild Bells”