While much has been made of the “Ten Commandments” in recent history, men for centuries have accepted these commandments as deeply rooted in the order of the universe and of creation—as an overt expression of the Natural Law. And, to be certain, they are logical as well as honest. They promote good order in the society, in the family, and in the community.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/burning-bushes-smoking-mountains-law-bradley-birzer.html

Even if the Allies should utterly defeat the Axis, Dawson feared that the poisons of power and centralization will remain. “The sufferings that the occupied countries have endured have weakened the whole tradition of civilized order and have accustomed men’s minds to violence and lawlessness,” he wrote a year later, in 1945. Because the democracies themselves were forms of totalitarianism, their party politics would especially descend into thuggery after the end of the war, thus permanently dividing Republicans from Democrats and Tories from Labour. We will no longer see our opponents as opposition, but rather as the enemy in a stake for total control of each respective society. Political opponents will call not for victory over their opposition, but rather for the complete “liquidation” of the opposition. “Every election,” he predicted, would become “a potential civil war.” Even as of 1945, broader commentaries identified fascists as “right wing” and democrats as “left wing,” thus creating artificial distinctions in the race for total control. “The result of this division is to obliterate the distinction between constitutional and totalitarian parties, and to force every shade of political opinion into alliance with some extremist totalitarian party which inevitably tends to become… predominant.”
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/christopher-dawson-modern-public-opinion-bradley-birzer.html

1774

• Parliament passes the five “intolerable acts”
• Late May: Maryland meeting in Annapolis passes resolves in support of Boston
• September 5-October 26: First Continental Congress (CC) meets
• September 17: Suffolk Resolves tempers but passes by CC
• October 14: CC passes “Declaration of Rights and Resolves”
• October 24: CC forms Continental Association (nonimportation, nonconsumption, nonexportation)
• October 25: CC petitions King for protection against Parliament
• October 26: Congress adjourns permanently–if King answers petition
• December: John Adams writes as “Novanglus”

1775

• February 9: Parliament declares Massachusetts in a “state of rebellion”
• March 22: Parliament rejects Burke’s plan of reconciliation
• April 19: Battles of Lexington and Concord
• May 10: American militias take Ft. Ticonderoga and Crown Point
• May 10: Second Continental Congress (SCC) meets; declares united colonies on defensive
• May 26: SCC again claims defensive
• May 29: SCC invites Canadian provinces to join America
• May 31: Mecklenburg County, NC, declares itself independent from UK
• June 15: SCC forms Continental Army; names Washington as commander
• June 17: Brits “win” the Battle of Bunker Hill
• July 6: SCC passes “Olive Branch Petition” for King; passes Dickinson’s Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms”
• August 2: SCC adjourns
• August 23: King rejects “Olive Branch Petition”; proclaims Americans as traitors to empire; colonists must either “submit or triumph.”  
• September 12: SCC meets; Georgia finally sends delegates; all 13 represented
• November 16: Burke again calls for reconciliation
• November 29: SCC forms secret committee to treat with other nations
• December 6: SCC declares complete independence from Parliament; claims loyalty to King
• December 22: Parliament declares all N.A. Colonies beyond protection of empire; prohibits all trade with colonies

The irony, Dawson noted, is that the allies, ostensibly at least, waged their war against fascism. What is this thing the enemy propagated through extreme violence? It is, Dawson stated, “an attempt to transform the modern society into a purely dynamic organism, and to fuse community, party and state as a unitary mass driven by the aggressive will to power.” Dawson cautioned against the identification of fascism with authority. Instead, he claimed, one must identify fascism with power. Authority, as opposed to power, was the proper acquiescence every society (and its members) gave to those who ordered and secured a healthy society. Thus, as examples, a judge had authority because he decided things with wisdom; a teacher had authority because she taught her students the good, the true, and the beautiful; a policeman had authority because he upheld the law. Authority, as properly understood, was vital to a free society as were natural rights, Dawson argued. Authority, when used well, protected social freedoms, justice, and law. When violated, though, authority easily became power, a “poison” that seeps through societies, destroying all that it cannot corrupt. Power is, in essence, raw and naked force.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/becoming-enemy-world-war-ii-christopher-dawson-bradley-birzer.html

Our beloved Cecilia Rose would’ve been twelve today. It’s not hard to imagine a curly, brown haired, blue-eyed girl being the delightful middle child of the family, just on the verge of teenagedom. 

I imagine she would still love all the things of childhood—her dolls, her princesses, her games, her costumes—just on the eve of thinking about grownup things. She would be, at age 12, the embodiment of that tug we once all felt, between past and present, between what we love and what we think we should love.

She would love to snuggle with me (a real love, past, present, and future), and she would adore her older siblings, while always counseling her younger ones. Her favorite color, I think, would be a hue of violet, and she would cherish the princess stories of George MacDonald. Her imagination would be her joy.

No matter how I might feel on August 7 or August 9, I never feel quite right on August 8. Even if I didn’t have a calendar in front of me, I know that my soul and my body would know that it’s August 8. 

August 8 is a world between worlds, a twilight existence.

Though I never knew Cecilia Rose well in person, the painful hole, the tearing pit, the deep abyss in my heart reminds me that I knew her completely—at least as a child of Christ. It’s a hole that never goes away, and, I suppose, never will. 

At least not until she (please, God!) greets me at the gates of heaven, grabs my hand, and asks me for a dance.

Happy birthday, my Cecilia Rose (b. and d. August 8, 2007).

I am not a professional economist. Nor have I played one on TV. My own academic background is in literature, philosophy, and then theology, where I earned my doctorate writing about soon-to-be-saint John Henry Newman and the threat of Hell. My knowledge of economics has come out of interest and necessity. My interest is because my own liberal education, no matter how flawed it may have been or dilatory I was in study, convinced me that all knowledge is one, and that to truly have a view of the world, one must have a sense of the importance and place of all subjects. Though economists have often overstated the importance of their discipline, I have nevertheless been impressed with the ways in which economists, though often dismissed with Macaulay’s gibe about being a “dismal science,” have often come, as William McGurn has observed, to the same practical conclusions about freedom and human dignity that theologians and moral philosophers have.

The necessity in my interest in economics is because I am married and have seven children. Though the sums needed to raise them are often overstated, my experience is that they do cost money. “Economy” comes from two Greek words, oikos (home) and nomos (rule). While many of us tend to think of economics as involving titans of industry, IPOs, international deals, and world-scale decisions and players, economics in its original sense is all home economics.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/writing-economics-david-deavel.html

My required reading list, H301, Autumn 2019.

Most available at: http://oll.libertyfund.org

Documents to read before midterm: 

John Adams, Dissertation on Feudal and Canon Law

Cato’s Letters: 15, 17, 18, 25, 27, 31, 35, 42, 59, 62, 66, 84, 94, 106, 114, 115

Thomas Gordon, “A Discourse of Standing Armies”

Demophilus, “The Genuine Principles of the Ancient Saxon, or English Constitution”

Addison, Cato: A Tragedy

Hamilton, “Remarks on the Quebec Bill”

Dickinson, Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer: 1, 3, 8-10, 12

Edmund Burke, “Speech on American Taxation”

Edmund Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies”

Samuel Sherwood, “The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness”

CX Letters (will be emailed to you)

Articles of Confederation 

Declaration of Independence (Jefferson’s version; will be emailed to you)

Documents to read before the final:

George Washington, “Circular to the States”(1783)

Northwest Ordinance, Articles 1-6

Farrand, ed., Records of the Federal Convention: May 29-June 8, June 18, June 26, June 28-29, July 26, August 7-9, August 13-14, August 21-22, August 30-31, September 17

Federalist Papers: 1, 10, 39, 45-51, 63, 70, 78, 84-85

Anti-Federalist Papers: 

James Wilson, “Speech to the Pennsylvania Convention”(December 1787)

John Dickinson as “Fabius,”letters 10-3

Noah Webster, “A Citizen of America”

Tench Coxe, “An American Citizen”

James Wilson, “Of the Law of Nature”

James Wilson, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals”

Burke, “Reflections on the Revolution in France,”pp. 87-176

Burke, “Further Reflections on the Revolution in France,”(1791), pp. 75-124, 160-201

George Washington, First Inaugural Address

George Washington, “To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport”

George Washington, “To the Roman Catholics”

George Washington, Farewell Address

As with all of Tolkien’s great tales of the First Age, the story of Beren and Lúthien transformed dramatically over sixty years from its first imagining and version in 1916 and 1917 to its relatively finalized version in 1977’s The Silmarillion. During those six decades, it appeared as a long tale of the Lost Tales, as a summary in the 1926 Sketch of the Mythology (written for Tolkien’s beloved professor from King Edward’s, R.W. Reynolds), as a radically ambitious poetic lay, The Lay of Leithian (1925-1931), and as an essential story within the various versions, including the final version, of The Silmarillion.

Yet, the essence of the story has remained the same in all of its many versions. Or, as Christopher so wisely put it, “The fluidity should not be exaggerated: there were nonetheless great, essential, permanences.”
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/08/jrr-tolkien-beren-and-luthien-bradley-birzer.html

All of this is understandable, of course, given that Barfield lived in London, not Oxford, and he joined his father’s law firm in 1929.[8] Though he continued to write, often prolifically and always brilliantly, he had to earn his living as a solicitor, not as an amateur philosopher. At best, Barfield claimed, he attended fewer than ten percent of the total meetings, and even this seems an overly generous number, especially given that he could not name the beginning or the end of the group.[9]

And, third, to be sure, any right-thinking individual, then or now, would want to have Owen Barfield as a vital and central member of the Inklings. The man was, simply put, genius and, equally important, generous and charitable. His insights into the Inklings, frankly, are beyond compare. In a 1969 lecture, Barfield claimed correctly that the Inklings had stood for and advanced four ideas: a longing for the Infinite and the western desires of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; that every person is endowed with dignity, especially as he or she moves toward sanctification; “the idealization of love between the sexes”; and, finally, that the truest stories end in joy, not sorrow.[10]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/07/was-owen-barfield-inkling-bradley-birzer.html

My new cartoon series with Michael Malice
— Read on mailchi.mp/tomwoods/malice