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by Bradley Birzer
For those of us who love C.S. Lewis, we think of the man in his many aspects. One aspect of his life, though, that many of even his most ardent admirers have neglected is C.S. Lewis as letter writer and correspondent. Just as the man never stopped writing his books, he seemed never to have stopped writing letters as well. His letters, it turns out, provide us with many of the great man’s most interesting insights, especially considering the immediacy of so many vital issues during his own day. Real, actual letters are a gift, an insight into our best and our worst selves. Unlike the present world of the ephemeral email and hatchet posts on social media, letters of the pre-internet era could be gorgeous works of art, in and of themselves. In them, the writer shares just a bit of his soul, preserving it for time… at least until time itself ends... [MORE]
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by Eva Brann
If the privatization of art and the socialization of politics cut the ground from under a communal art, is there then no public place left for the arts? Not so. I have been speaking of politics in the largest sense, meaning the national political community. But in this country, the actual business of life is largely carried on in the cities, and it is in the cities that a civic life in the fulfilling, antique, sense is to be found. The cities too are the natural seats of the arts, because they are the communities in which the arts are cherished and in which the artists flourish, and so it is the cities which have the symphony halls, the art centers, and the theatres. Therefore, it is in the cities that the arts and civic life still intersect, and here too those classical dilemmas concerning the divergences of the judgment of the citizen and the imagination of the artist may on occasion come to life... [MORE]
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by Mark Malvasi
The tiresome cant about the work ethic notwithstanding, Americans do not celebrate, or even recognize, the dignity of labor. The economy bestows its rewards not on the hardworking mechanic or carpenter, not on the dedicated policeman or teacher. Only those who have profited from some lucky investment or some capricious shift in the market enjoy the benefit of material success and the acclaim of public opinion that attends it. Whatever they may tell you, the majority of Americans do not respect honest toil, at least not as much as they admire money. Although they profess to disdain both the idle rich and the idle poor, they do not at the same time esteem those who must work for a living, even as most count themselves among that number. They revere instead the financier, the speculator, the entertainer, the athlete, the celebrity, all those who produce nothing, to paraphrase John Stuart Mill, and who yet grow rich in their sleep... [MORE]
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by Kevin Gutzman
Asked fifty or one hundred years ago, Americans would have identified Thomas Jefferson as a great hero, perhaps the great hero, of American history. As democrat, intellectual, and revolutionary penman, the man who made the case against George III and defeated Alexander Hamilton had lit the path toward American republican success. In recent years, however, the general public and scholars alike have recast Jefferson—if not as a villain, at least as a disappointment. His name has been removed from several celebrations and at least one park, and few today recall what it was that past generations loved about the Master of Monticello. So what is still American in the thought of Thomas Jefferson?... [MORE]
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by Nicholas Zinos
Chastity is a vice and a threat to totalitarian society. This same virtue, which in past ages was considered to be the strongest and surest way to ensure rightly-ordered relationships between men and women and which provided the greatest stability to the family unit and society, is now considered to undermine society. The totalitarian State wants to control all; it wants to own all that is human, and this includes the erotic, the sexual, and the romantic. By suppressing and controlling these elements in men and women, it hopes to obtain complete domination over every aspect of their humanity. The concept of the freely chosen sexual act—not done out of “duty” to the State or society—but done because the personal force of love, of attraction, is given free rein, is the ultimate rebellion... [MORE]
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