Friday is the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi. This crude poem–sometimes described as a piece of rhyming prose– is written in Umbrian, an Italian dialect distinct from but not too different from the Florentine Tuscan that Dante made the language of Italian literature
A podcast on the casino mania that afflicts the dying cities of the American South and Rustbelt–with apologies to Jimmie Rodgers.
The political Right, both in the United States and in Europe, has come to perceive the professed worldview of Russia’s ruling junta as a conservative antidote to the poison of modernity, a somber counterweight to the West’s cartoonish decline, and an infusion of plain old horse sense to arrest its slide into liberal dementia. To be sure, the poison and the decline and the dementia are all very much in evidence, yet the plain old horse sense issuing from the mighty steppes west of the Urals, alas, is just demagoguery – eyewash and bunkum on a par with the Soviet...
It is dangerous to associate oneself with the term “romantic,” lest one be labeled a sentimental fool, a Don Juan, Taugenichts or a heretic from someone’s orthodoxy; I do, however, reluctantly claim the epithet. From childhood, in my earliest memories, I apprehended, although I certainly did not comprehend, that God, who is wholly other, was nevertheless, paradoxically, immanent in nature – the cosmic order. I thus developed a sense of awe which anticipated an impending encounter. As I matured, I came to understand, that nature was therefore a mediator, a sacramental element between God and man. It was at a...
A new branch of agriculture developed in Russia, perhaps to compensate her denizens for the burning forests and poisoned lakes, is called troll farming. The credit for this innovation goes to the man known as “Putin’s chef,” who also has in the commodious pocket of his apron the government contracts for supplying food to public institutions, such as schools and kindergartens, as evidenced recently by mass outbreaks of salmonella among Moscow’s children.
Each generation does what it can in its own time and in its own way. Fundamental principles—political as well as moral—do not change, but the challenges that require a political response are always changing. There is little point in quarreling with the conservatives who defined themselves almost exclusively by their opposition to Communism, an entirely evil political doctrine implemented and reinforced by actions and policies that were equally evil. Nonetheless, whatever their virtues might have been, those defenders of the New Deal status quo had little to say of any use to people of the year 1990, and their attitudes, in...
For some odd reason theoretical debate among conservatives has devolved into the discussions between David French and Sohrab Ahmari. Yet both are gun controllers – therefore not real conservatives. As I often say: Second Amendment, First Freedom. If you can’t own a gun to defend yourself and your family, you’re not free. What good is the rest of the Bill of Rights if you don’t have the arms, personally, to defend those rights? Ahmari, to use older terms, is supposed to be the more “social conservative” of the two. Yet social conservatism (contrasted with “strong defense” conservatism and “economic freedom”...
Political reformers looking to mire America more deeply in corruption and inefficiency have come up with term limits as a care for everything from warts to constitutional liberty.
From almost the day of Reagan’s election, many self-described conservatives were having serious doubts about the usefulness—and sincerity—of the so-called movement and the institutions and publications that were its most public face. Skepticism developed into cynicism and disgust as a set of leftist opportunists—“so-called neoconservatives”—waged a blitzkrieg campaign to take over the movement. When conservative writers and activists welcomed the newcomers as sincere and talented, the reaction of sensible people should have been amused incredulity.
The favorite time to set off fireworks in Palermo is just after lunch, when of course it’s still light out and nobody can see them. “No matter,” muse local worthies, “because everybody can hear them, and that’s the main thing.” It’s a little like publishing books for the blind which are actually abracadabra set in braille and justifying the crazy venture by saying that what’s important is the feeling in the reader’s fingers. The South loves noise. Garbage men make it, opera singers make it, quarreling neighbors make it, and the high point of the symphony season here a few...
