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What is a Nation, Anyway?
Proper forgetting depends on the idea of a nation itself. For Renan, “a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” built on two things, the past and the present.
Ode to Gettysburg at 161
To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves.
Belonging to the Garden
I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.
Joan of Arc’s Grief
My grief would overwhelm me if I were not in God's grace. — Joan of Arc, February 24, 1431
Straw Men and the Possibility of Community in Modernity
Between these extremes, however, is free choice within reasonable limits, which I believe makes the value of community and its deliberative fruits still possible, even within the reality of the fractured and deracinated world in which we are living.
At Home with James Matthew Wilson
However, in St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, James Matthew Wilson shows that the seeds of a rebirth of civilization are to be planted and nurtured in the soil of everyday life.
Familiar Revolution
Like the very young and the very old among us, we must forget the learned delusion of independence that revolution prefers and accept the radical dependence of the human condition.
Searching for The Thing: A Review of The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay...
While she relates the years of kaleidoscopic confusion, she provides waypoints to keep the reader grounded: “This is where we are, and this is where we’re going.”
Two Cheers for E-Bikes
Automobiles shield you from the outside world, its sounds, its colors. But on my bike, I encounter my environment directly.
The Middle Ground of Wit and Insult, Considered Together With Their Limits
In other words, knowledge and reason are no match for our gargantuan vices. The giants passion and pride cannot be held at bay by the ignorance that prevails in public discourse and certainly not by the bluster it hides behind.
Else Lasker-Schüler’s Grief
Her work is certainly redolent of sorrow and, as she describes it, the eternity that dwells within her. But her words also carry hope and surprising faith that she will see her son again.
News, Notes, and Podcasts
From the Archives
Thoughts on Dallmayr and a Different Post-Liberalism
Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate has put “postliberalism” back in the news, assuming it had ever left....
A Country Boy Can Thrive
You can leave your corner of the country without escaping it. And these memoirs testify to the importance of bringing something back.
Brass Spittoon: Conservatism, Inc.
Patrick Deneen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeff Polet respond to J.D. Vance's recent American Mind essay "End the Globalization Gravy Train" and consider the prospects for postliberal conservatism.