Public Writings

Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies 18 (2022) … One conviction Patrizi took from his Greek authorities, fundamental to what I have...

First Things, December 7, 2021 Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the European Renaissance was the profound harmony it achieved...

First Things, November 17, 2021 If you’re a progressive, you might think that it’s no problem identifying the right side of history....

Law & Liberty, November 1, 2021 In 2020 the American educational system was attacked by two viruses: Covid-19 and an unusually virulent...

First Things , October 11, 2021 Last weekend I attended the “Higher Education Summit,” an annual gathering sponsored by the Classical...

Law & Liberty , September 20, 2021 Old-school historians like me tend to be shy about using modern terminology to describe pre-modern...

The New Criterion, September 2021 A civilization is a complex system of customs, practices, and beliefs that binds a society or a...

Public Discourse, July 28, 2021 Suppose you were living at a time when all around you, it seemed, civilization was breaking down....

Law & Liberty, June 17, 2021 It’s always difficult for persons of a conservative temperament to know what to think about the...

First Things, June 1, 2021 Twenty-twenty was a tough year for the tradition-minded, and so far, 2021 isn’t any better. Those of us who...

Law & Liberty, March 24, 2021 Imagine you are a teenager newly arrived at college. You’ve had a couple inspiring teachers of literature...

Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2021 Ours is an age of intellectual conformity. Perhaps this is true to some extent of all ages, as...

Sacred Architecture Journal, Spring 2021 "Christian humanism” seems an oxymoron. Since the nineteenth century, humanism has been widely...

Law & Liberty, February 10, 2021 At the beginning of Men at Arms , Evelyn Waugh’s great novel of the Second World War, his protagonist...

Cultura Animi 4 (2021) In this disturbing year of 2020, I find that I have to be careful what I read before going to bed. To get a good...

Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2020 I don’t find the word “hyperpartisanship” in any dictionary. It’s not in the Oxford English...

American Affairs 4.4 (Winter, 2020) There is something a little unsettling about a nation that deliberately sets about increasing its...

First Things , November 1, 2020 The words “piety” and “pious” have an archaic ring; moderns find them hard to use without irony or a...

Law & Liberty, October 5. 2020 It was about fifteen years ago, I believe, that I first became aware that “classical liberalism” was a...

The New Criterion , October 2020 (On the aesthetics and history of the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.) Abraham Lincoln had...