Conservatism
Sir Roger Scruton was born four years after Winston Churchill’s encouragement to his people after Dunkirk. Scruton is unabashedly Western and English. He is a nationalist and Christian, and he is extremely skeptical of the post-war values that have subsumed his society and culture. He worries about the West, and in his advancing years he…
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We Christians do not swear by our altars or the precious metals that surround them; but we should focus on their purpose, their end. We build beautiful churches, design beautiful buildings, and care about our personal appearance for a reason. We who love the Lord cherish the stuff around us because it is his, and…
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In 1953 Russell Kirk published his famous manifesto The Conservative Mind, which offered a narrative account of a movement that contrasts with post-Enlightenment progressivism. From its beginning, conservatism has been against things and for things. It is not an inexplicable series of reactions. It is neither standing still nor walking backward. Some changes are intolerable, but many changes are desirable,…
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I have recently tasted a luscious fruit of modernity for the first time in my life: surgery. It was a simple matter that required less than 30 minutes of my doctor’s time; but what a revolution for me. When I awoke from my first experience of anesthesia, I was missing an impacted wisdom tooth that…
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Rod Dreher’s writings were a breath of fresh air when I first encountered them. I saw something of my family life in his “crunchy cons.” We homeschool. We don’t have cable. We eat organic food. We pray together. I pastor a small but growing congregation that is already something of a world within a world.…
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Beyond partisan rhetoric there remains a widespread longing for excellence in society. And no one has articulated how this will to conserve operates better than Plato. Even as we innovate to our peril, we remain generally humble before the sacred task of maintaining and passing on what we have inherited. Wilson reminds us that even…
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