The Home of American Intellectual Conservatism — First Principles

March 10, 2010

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Feature Articles
John Keats When we think ethically, we are asking ourselves questions about what a good life looks like—what is its form. So, too, on a wider scale with politics: political speculation tries to imagine the desirable form of communal life. No society can understand itself without understanding and seeking its proper form, and so no society can exist without being graspable primarily in terms of beauty. Such was the insight of Edmund Burke and of the conservative tradition to which he was inadvertent godfather. . . . The conclusion of James Matthew Wilson’s seven-part series on art, politics, and the conservative tradition. [more]

Socrates and Alcibiades No one can deal with political power until he has first dealt with the mind and soul of the one who exercises it and is responsible for its results. Indeed, we have to begin with the affirmation that the ruling politician in any regime, no matter what its configuration, does have a mind with a soul in which it is grounded. . . . . Fr. Schall on politics and doing right. [more]

Reagan and Gorbachev Conservatives have long credited Ronald Reagan with winning the Cold War, a conflict that had occupied the world for decades. Liberals demand: Where is the proof? Fortunately for history and Reagan’s place in it, indisputable evidence of Reagan’s personal leadership has been supplied at last. . . . Lee Edwards reviews Reagan’s Secret War. [more]



From the ISI Journal Archives
Capitalism versus Socialism
Ludwig von Mises (IR 5:3-4, Spring 1969) - 03/09/10
Most of our contemporaries are highly critical of what they call “the unequal distribution of wealth.” As they see it, justice would require a state of affairs under which nobody enjoys what are to be considered superfluous luxuries as long as other people lack things necessary for the preservation of life, health, and cheerfulness. The ideal condition of mankind, they pretend, would be an equal distribution of all available consumer goods.... [more]

The Sources of Big Government
Robert Higgs (from IR 20:1, Spring/Summer 1984) - 02/25/10
The twentieth century witnessed a decline of the American commitment to limited government and extensive private property rights. When the century began, our govern­ment still approximated a minimal state. We did not practice pure laissez faire, but we still placed severely binding restraints on government and al­lowed few intrusions of its potentially awesome power into the economic affairs of individual citizens. But government now suf­fuses every aspect of economic and social life. Merely to list its numerous powers would require a large volume: our farms and factories, our homes and schools, our health care, even our recreation—all feel its impact. . . . [more]

A Call to Arms
Caleb Stegall (from IR 41:2, Fall 2006) - 01/01/10
It is an occasional convention in conservative literature to talk about the “real split” in the world that animates contemporary political and cultural disagreements, a split deeper than the more pedestrian divide of Republicans versus Democrats. Russell Kirk liked to quote Eric Voegelin’s remark that the “great line of demarcation in modern politics...is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other.”... [more]

Return to Reality
Patrick Deneen (from IR 41:2, Fall 2006) - 01/01/10

Dissecting a Democratic Illusion
Russell Hittinger (from IR 41:2, Fall 2006) - 01/01/10
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Lifespan: (1934–1993)

An Old Right conservative, traditionalist, and follower of Edmund Burke, the Anti-Federalists, and the Southern Agrarians, Melvin E. Bradford was born and reared in Fort Worth, Texas. He ... [more]

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