Modern Age articles from March 2007

Modern Age archives from March 2007

Drosophila.(Poem)
March 22, 2007... Of weighted glass the chamber held the fly; the rubber tubes were fed from poisons measured; organic gas was freed to travel hither while stopwatch counted down. From center chamber choosing left by scent; the fly was bred for weeks...

Modern Age, 1957-2007.
March 22, 2007... IN THE YEAR of Our Lord 2007 we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Modern Age as a conservative review by Russell Amos Kirk and Henry Regnery of blessed memory. We do so with great thanks as we pause to mark a milestone and...

Richard Weaver and piety towards nature.
March 22, 2007... IN RECENT YEARS many politicians and pundits who call themselves "conservatives" have been notorious for opposing any and all measures to protect the environment. In the 104th Congress they attacked virtually every environmental law on the...

On Claes Ryn's political philosophy.
March 22, 2007... IN 2002, the Intercollegiate Review published an essay by Peter Augustine Lawler entitled "Conservative Postmodernism, Postmodern Conservatism." In it, Professor Lawler argued that "conservative thought today is authentic postmodernism." (1)...

The divinization of democracy.
March 22, 2007... He who has not lived before 1789 does not know the sweetness of living. --TALLEYRAND (1754-1838) CALL IT ONE MAN'S OPINION; but Talleyrand happens to have been one of the most perspicacious and all-savoring of men. He had his...

Islam, America, and the political economy of liberty.
March 22, 2007... THESE ARE CHALLENGING TIMES for many scholars in the general area of Middle East affairs. Those who labor on the complex issue of relationships between the Islamic world and the West perhaps face even greater obstacles. The challenge is...

Hannah Arendt's Eichmann reconsidered.
March 22, 2007... DOES THINKING prevent evil? Can critical self-reflection protect a person from participating in evil, particularly in a totalitarian regime? The distinguished political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) thought so. Her famous 1963 case...

Soul-work: reading as a transformative pursuit.
March 22, 2007... EDITOR'S NOTE: In this poignant memoir, written in a meditative mode, Professor Richard K. Cross (b. 1940) evokes the humane spirit that defined and shaped his vocation as a university teacher of English language and literature. In particular...

Old Man Waking to the Late News.(Poem)
March 22, 2007... Wherever it is today, the muddled east runs on un-reformed--this Healthy Choice a petrified jungle in your rocking lap. Those spooks who trolled you so all night re-coil to their fatigued kingdoms in denial. You--you gutted no wolf,...

Neoconservatism and the power of ideology.(Book review)
March 22, 2007... Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, by Douglas Murray, New York: Encounter Books, 2006. 247+xxiii pp. THIS BOOK IS A PAEAN to neoconservatism and an unabashed defense of its leading lights who were (and may still be) prime movers in forging...

Rediscovering John Jay.(Book review)
March 22, 2007... John Jay: Founding Father, by Walter Stahr, Hambledon and London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005. 366 pp. AS A MEMBER of the founding generation, John Jay's credentials sparkle. He served in both the First and Second...

Byron's Scottish essence.(Byron, Sully, and the Power of Portraiture)(Book review)
March 22, 2007... Byron, Sully, and the Power of Portraiture, by John Clubbe, Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005. 345 pp. WALKING INTO THE OWEN GALLERY on New York's 75th Street in April of 1999, Professor John Clubbe saw a gorgeous portrait of Lord Byron...

Acts of destruction.(My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority)(Book review)
March 22, 2007... My Life Among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, by Philip Rieff, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. 234 pp. CAVEAT LECTOR: the latest work by the late Philip Rieff is impenetrably, almost...

Naipaul's way.(COMMENTS)
March 22, 2007... THE CENTRAL TASK of all literary art, V. S. Naipaul believes, is "to awaken the sense of true wonder" in relation to the world we inhabit. The uncertainty that exists today concerning the purpose of fiction leads to the promotion of work that...

The Great Gatsby.
March 22, 2007... I AM ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that The Great Gatsby (1925) is one of the finest pieces of American literature. It is such because F. Scott Fitzgerald has displayed not only insight into the American psyche but also a magnificent grasp of "The...