What exactly is the conservative intellectual tradition in America More troubling still what can be said who can be cited to counter Lionel Trilling rsquo s pronouncement in his preface to The Liberal Imagination 1950 that In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant

Can great artists be holy Should they even try to be holy This question has troubled many painters poets and composers for centuries Tormented by the world rsquo s imperfections uniquely susceptible to the sensual and necessarily hardened to criticism artists may be more vulnerable to particula

Some of my best friends yes I know it rsquo s a clich are labor organizers We tend to talk about the prospects of the labor movement and the conversations quickly turn gloomy The A F L -C I O now that its leader Andrew Stern and his brethren are leaving is in tatters The percentage of un

Some people would characterize the past five years of the Bush administration as inconceivably distasteful and disastrous For others the administration rsquo s policies are long awaited perfectly logical and admired Why such a discrepancy In American Theocracy which reads like a cross between a

There is a master of American letters working in our midst today of whom not many readers are aware For more than 23 years the novelist Stephen Wright has written uncompromisingly and astutely about America in meticulously crafted prose and witty realistic dialogue that reflects the spiritual wan

One of my strongest primal memories is of the Knights of Columbus As far back as I can remember they were as present and as taken-for-granted as the Austin Boulevard Bus the Lake Street L and Pedersen rsquo s Ice Cream Store Commodore Barry Council of which my father was a member and once Grand