"SHE IS THE PARTISAN of virtue alone." (1) With those sonorous words Alasdair MacIntyre dismissed Marilyn Butler's attempt to identify Jane Austen with the Burkean conservatives of the French Revolutionary period in her now well-known study Jane Austen and the War of Ideas...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+English+spring+of+Catholicism.-a0151379355The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones, by Adam Schwartz, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005. 431 pp.

THIS IS A REMARKABLE, indeed a staggering book. Each of the four sections, on G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones, taken alone, would have made it worthwhile. Taken together,...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Betraying+conservative+principles.-a0151379354Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, by Bruce Bartlett, New York, Doubleday, 2006. 310 pp.

BRUCE BARTLETT is widely known in conservative circles principally through his syndicated column which normally focuses on economic and fiscal concerns. Writing from a libertarian and free trade perspective, his columns are invariably informative, often...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Our+friend+Mr.+Darwin%3f-a0151379353Darwinian Conservatism, by Larry Arnhart, Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2005. 156 pp.

DARWINIAN CONSERVATIVES, such as Larry Arnhart, hold that it's inevitable and good that we're stuck with our natures. We are, for example, inescapably "sexual animals." We can't help having identities formed by being either male or female, and the sex we have been given by nature (as opposed to the...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+world+of+Michael+Oakeshott.-a0151379352The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott, by Terry Nardin, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. 241 pp.

In Defence of Modernity: Vision and Philosophy in Michael Oakeshott, by Efraim Podoksik, Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2003. 268 pp.

IN 1999, I edited a book addressing the critical legacy of Lionel Trilling. The volume was entitled Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, with the sub-title representing a nod both to Trilling's own essay collection, The Opposing Self(1955), and to his endless modulations and modifications of being. Lionel Trilling and the Critics charted and evaluated the critical...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Orwell+and+Catholicism.-a0151379349GEORGE ORWELL ENJOYED RUMINATING in print over how a writer's social and political beliefs seem to move beneath what he writes like an underground stream. One of the twentieth century's greatest essayists in English, he was extremely sensitive to how subject matter and honesty weighed against style. Among other topics, this frequently led him to expand on several ideas about Roman Catholicism...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+conservative+moral+philosophy+of+Scheler+and+Kolnai.-a0151379348EDMUND HUSSERL was the source of the principal philosophical movement of the twentieth century: phenomenology. The most important continental European philosophers of the century just past were all linked to the phenomenological movement to some degree or other. The greatest of these, Martin Heidegger, is infamous for cutting his ties with Husserl in order to curry favor with the Nazis....]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+secret+of+Straussianism.-a0151379347DURING THE LATE 1940s and into the 1950s, as Anglo-American analytic philosophy came to dominate much of the academy and seemed to chase religion and ethics out of the philosophy curriculum, political philosophy as a discipline witnessed a revival of an older effort to ground thinking about morals and politics in what is known as natural law or natural right. Carried on in the shadow of...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/War%2c+power%2c+and+supremacy%3a+a+conservative+interpretation.-a0151379346 At the zenith of our commitments we were at the nadir of our precautions.... --WALTER LIPPMANN, U. S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (1943)

IN HIS WARTIME STUDY of American foreign policy, Walter Lippmann remarked on the propensity of the United States government for entering into commitments that lie outside the scope of existing resources. Our relations in Asia from the...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Restoring+the+meaning+of+conservatism%3a+final+reflections.-a0151379345T.H. PICKETT's following essay on "War, Power, and Supremacy" further develops the urgent need stressed in the preceding three issues of Modern Age, "Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism." This need becomes even greater as the debate continues between traditional conservatives and ambitious usurpers. Actually this debate would itself be academic if the intrinsic historical and metaphysical...]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Continuum.-a0151379344 The clock goes off. Lying in the black, Somehow you sense that you've been double-crossed, Condemned, trapped within the cul-de-sac Of recurring endless time, completely lost. The clock goes off. You startle yourself awake, Maybe it was just some stupid dream? Some idiotic, self-absorbed mistake? Surely things are better than they seem? The clock goes off. Or does it? Paranoid, you lie in...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Silverfish.-a0149012379 The silverfish, unable to crawl up The steep, cool porcelain walls, Goes round and round the oblong Until I turn on the water and it spins, Scrambling furiously, down the bathtub drain Into the secret night of this house from which It appeared, looking for I know not what, For light maybe, But not certainly this brutal, careless drowning. The silverfish doesn't know anything-- Doesn't know...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+conservative+movement+in+discontinuity.-a0149012378THE FALL 2005 ISSUE of Modern Age included George W. Carey's "The Future of Conservatism" that attracted my attention for several reasons. It was forcefully written and testified to Professor Carey's accumulated knowledge of constitutional history. It also raised points of contention within what seems the current "conservative" coalition, an arrangement that he obviously disapproves of. And...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/An+unconvincing+defense.-a0149012377COMMON-LAW LIBERTY: Rethinking American Constitutionalism, by James R. Stoner, Jr., is a short book of essays, half of which were previously published, that is guided by the best intentions. Professor Stoner defends the reasonableness and the traditionalism of the common law in opposition to contemporary theory-driven jurisprudence. In so doing, he displays a mastery of English common law and...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/New+Maistre+studies.-a0149012376Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought, and Influence: Selected Studies, edited by Richard Lebrun, Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. 338 pp.

IN Joseph de Maistre's Life, Thought and Influence Maistre is the focal point of analysis, in contrast with general works on conservatism where, perhaps because some of his critics held the view that his opinions were immoderate,...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+quintessential+founder.-a0149012375John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic, by Jeffry H. Morrison, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. 220 pp.

WHO NOW REMEMBERS John Witherspoon? Despite his many achievements--a celebrated pastor, president of Princeton, tutor to James Madison and other founders, and the sole cleric to sign the Declaration of Independence--Witherspoon has all but fallen...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Returning+to+the+sacramental+world.-a0149012374Eudora Welty and Walker Percy: The Concept of Home in Their Lives and Literature, by Marion Montgomery, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2004. v + 214 pp.

MONTGOMERY'S BOOKS, which are not strictly literary criticism, incorporate a wide body of theology, philosophy and poetry. Many enlightening statements from these sources reflect and play off one another like light through a...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Who+are+we%3f%22.-a0149012373My Correct Views on Everything, by Leszek Kolakowski; edited by Zbigniew Janowski, South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2005. viii + 284 pp.

LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI is among the most prominent political and religious thinkers of our time. This volume brings together essays and addresses, spanning the period from 1956 to 2003, illustrating the connection of the political and...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/White+Light.-a0149012371 As Winter passes through the glass of Time, Its whiteness separates into a band Of colors. Red tulips, bronze jonquils climb, With violets and bluebells, on green land. Cherry trees, blossoming as white as snow, Blush. Indigo lilacs bloom fragrantly. Yellow and pink honeysuckle vines blow In west winds wafting earth's perfumery. As golden sunlight gleams on April's days, What is that white...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Joseph+Schwartz%3a+man+of+faith+and+letters.-a0149012370FROM THE VERY FIRST TIME I heard Professor Joseph Schwartz speak--in an address to the new English Teaching Assistants (of which I was one) at Marquette University in August of 1980--I knew that I had encountered a rare teacher. Challenging us to recognize the rare opportunity that lay before us, he spoke with an exceptional self-possession that forever fixed in my mind his charge to us to...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Viacheslav+Ivanov%3a+culture+and+memory.-a0149012369IN 1920, AFTER A HARSH WINTER, Viacheslav Ivanov found a temporary refuge in a sanatorium for imperiled writers in Moscow. During June and July he shared a room with his old friend, the cultural historian Mikhail Gershenzon. Inevitably, their conversation turned to the cataclysmic events unfolding outside their precarious asylum. Russian culture had been put on trial by the Revolution and the...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+dangerous+irrelevance+of+recent+theory.-a0149012368IN HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN'S "The Emperor's New Clothes," two con artists swindle the emperor and his court into believing in the existence of magical clothes that will reveal the incompetence or the stupidity of anyone unable to appreciate their invisible workmanship. The two charlatans rely on the vanity and the insecurity of their audience, none of whom wishes to be revealed as...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+fragility+of+democracy.-a0149012367I

It is reported that as the delegates to the Constitutional Convention trudged out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, an anxious person in the crowd inquired of Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it." (1) The keeping of it is the subject of this essay. The democracy...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+patriotism+of+a+conservative.-a0149012366Editor's Note: The theme of "Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism" was first announced in the Summer 2005 issue of Modern Age. The Fall 2005 issue featured Professor George W. Carey's "The Future of Conservatism," which has distinctly engaged both concerned readers and traditionalist conservatives. The very next issue (Winter 2006), with the publication of Dr. Arthur Versluis's "The...]]>Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/School+and+society%3a+a+conservative+perspective.-a0149012365 Happy, if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! --EDMUND BURKE

THE CONTINUING CRISIS in public education also sees a continuing pattern of reform proffered by minds bent on solving what are now decidedly fixed problems. There is no end to strategies for remedying educational ills and improving students'...]]>Sun, 1 Jan 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ernest+Hemingway.-a0146161080I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AMAZED at the place that Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) has achieved in American letters. To be sure, he was a celebrity and I have no argument or quarrel with those who have made him so. I simply believe that he is not a novelist who deserves the adulation that he has received from the American public. Hemingway is very much like the musician who knows only one note or tune...]]>Sun, 1 Jan 2006 00:00:00 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/German+philosophy+and+the+ethical+life.-a0146161079On Germans and Other Greeks: Tragedy and Ethical Life, by Dennis Schmidt, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. 337pp.

AT THE VERY BEGINNING of L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between (1953), an elderly narrator, about to take up a story from his youth, cautions his readers that what they are set to hear may prove difficult to comprehend. "The past is a foreign country," he...]]>