As Cicero critically notes, during all of its history, Rome came about by trial and error, custom and habit, not by design. “Our commonwealth, in contrast, was not shaped by one man’s talent but by that of many; and not in one person’s lifetime, but over many generations.” Livy, later, argued the same point, but in Polybian fashion. Cicero notes that through On the Republic he hopes to “show you our commonwealth as it is born, grows up, and comes of age.” By implication, of course, Cicero anticipates the decay, corruption, middle-age, and eventual death of the republic. Unlike in the American experience, the Roman republicans could not appeal to its “founders” or its “founding” or its specific constitution. Instead, all things came into being over time and through incredibly difficult and painstaking work. America’s Republic might be a mighty fortress, but Rome’s was poetic. Only in the divine, Cicero claims, could one find an origin of Rome. The rest was, simply put, experience and tenacity.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/natural-foreign-republics-rome-america-bradley-birzer.html

Tonsor adopted the fusionist project but ultimately transformed it into a civilizational mission that went far beyond American politics. He believed that the Roman and Anglo-Catholics who comprised the traditionalist wing of the post-World War II conservative movement in the U.S. represented the last hurrah of Catholic humanism in the West to that point. In previous ages, Catholic humanists had risen up to help the Church prevail against the Roman Empire, Germanic invasions, Protestant Reformation, and Modern Age. Beginning in the 1960s, as late modernity began transitioning to postmodernity, Catholic humanists were called on, once again, to fight a culture war – this time in a battle of the books that drew in positivists, Marxists, nihilists, statists, and postmodernists. When Tonsor and other Catholic humanists confronted modern and postmodern movements, they did not just reject them outright. Rather, the task was to sift and weigh and test contemporary thought for what was wheat and what was chaff. Whatever was true, good, and beautiful in modern-postmodern thought could be – should be – baptized and redeemed. 
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/fusionist-mind-stephen-tonsor-gleaves-whitney.html

Its own kind of debating society, the TCBS considered almost any question as long as it avoided relationships with girls. “Oh, we [TCBS] discussed everything under the sun except girls I should say. Oh, yes. That was what bound us together. Somehow you felt ‘this chap and I can talk about anything.’” Wiseman later remembered, “And we also shared the philosophy that, number one is at the top. And I don’t know why those things impressed me so that now you’re sitting there and they sort of come out again. But there it is, and I feel sure that I’ve got it right. . . . But as I say, we formed the TCBS because it—when we had a gap in these exam programs we pushed off to Barrow’s stores in order to have some tea.”[9] And, yet, it wasn’t just girls. Though current events were not prohibited, Tolkien avoided them. “I mean to say that Tolkien was a very constructive person, in a narrow line,” Wiseman explained. “You ask him about Norse poetry, he’s bound to get it right. You asked him about Calvin Coolidge, he might quite easily get it wrong.”[10] Still, if Wiseman remembered correctly, Tolkien dominated the discussions, not just because of his personality, but because of his penetrating intelligence and knowledge. “Well, you couldn’t [feel comradeship] with John Ronald. He wasn’t the comrade of anybody except himself. . . . Oh yes, and he deserved it, too.”[11] Several other students at King Edward’s joined the TCBS as well, but Tolkien, Wiseman, Gilson, and Smith remained the core four of the group.[12]
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/immortal-four-tolkien-barrovian-society-bradley-birzer.html

This program was laid out at the First U.S. Regional Meeting of Popular Movements, which happened last week, and summed up in a manifesto called “Message from Modesto.” That “Meeting” included not just the cardinal and the bishops, but staff from the Vatican department for the Promotion of Integral Human Development and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development [CCHD].

The CCHD is the organization that radical Saul Alinsky personally helped left-wing Catholics to design, as the exposé A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing documents. The Chicago branch of the CCHD, with the approval of then Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, cut the check that sent the young Barack Obama to his first Saul Alinsky “community organizing” school.
— Read on stream.org/these-us-catholic-bishops-promise-disrupt-trump/

Though I consider myself rather patriotic—especially to the West of Socrates and Augustine and to the America of Washington and Jefferson—I have often found public liturgies, such as Memorial Day, distasteful. There’s too much contrivance in them, and they always feel too “new and improved” and yet sterile even in their flashiness.

At an aesthetic level, who wouldn’t choose to wear black and pour a bottle of tequila on a grave on All Soul’s Day under a grim November sky rather than be mesmerized by the gaudy reds and blues displayed around blossoming spring flowers and under a glittering May sun?

Mea culpa, but death in this world is not a pretty thing, though many die well. Death should be somber, contemplative, and prayerful, not jingoistically and superficially triumphant. Our victory in death comes from He who died on a Hill of Skulls, not from the soldier of a nation-state.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/real-memorials-patriotism-jingoism-bradley-birzer-timeless.html

Yet, in this greatest of strengths also resides the deepest of weaknesses. When the people enjoy true liberty, they often fail to identify its source, admiring its effects rather than its causes. In particular, they misunderstand the necessity of virtue to the health of a society, misbelieving it the possession of the haughty and elite. “For when, on account of this mistaken notion of the common people, the State begins to be ruled by the riches, instead of the virtue, of a few men, these rulers tenaciously retain the title, though they do not possess the character of the best,” he laments. “For riches, names, and power, when they lack wisdom and the knowledge of how to live and to rule over others, are full of dishonour and insolent pride, nor is there any more depraved type of State than that in which the richest are accounted best.”
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/05/cicero-republic-three-in-one-bradley-birzer.html

As a lawyer, I could be reprimanded, maybe even disbarred, for the kind of professional misconduct that Mr. Michel has demonstrated in his intemperate reporting about the Abbeville Institute’s conference. Shouldn’t journalists be held equally accountable?  Arguably, at least in certain circumstances, their capacity to harm society is greater than lawyers’, given that their writings are immediately available worldwide whereas the actions of most lawyers most of the time are confined to their jurisdiction and the parties to a case. If I could be removed from my profession or disciplined for actions similar to those of Mr. Michel in this instance, why shouldn’t he be removed from his?  Will media companies, including those that employ him, care about the flaws in his reporting?  Will they continue to feature his writings or air his opinions on television? Will his other work be scrutinized to ensure that it has truthfully conveyed verifiable facts to the general public? And what will happen to him if concerned readers discover a pattern of professional misconduct in his work, or that he has misled the public?
— Read on www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/think-progress-publishes-fake-news/

Eleanor Rabaioli needs your help today! Help Catherine Kuiper Heal – Friends, A little over one year ago, our dear Catherine (Sims) Kuiper was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called dermatomyositis.  She had defended her dissertation the previous summer (while pregnant with her second son, Daniel) and was set to graduate with her Ph.D. from Notre Dame in…
— Read on www.gofundme.com/help-catherine-kuiper-heal