The Recovery of the Liberal Arts

The good folks at The Imaginative Conservative have kindly republished an essay I wrote, "The Recovery of the Liberal Arts."  I originally published this essay in Houston Baptist University's wonderful journal, The City.

To my students in particular: I recommend you put The Imaginative Conservative on your Google Reader, or whatever you use to see what is being published out there on the web.  They publish some wonderful material--both current and older material.

The link to my essay can be found here.

The link to all of the essays I have written for The Imaginative Conservative can be found here.

I hope you enjoy!

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Category: Recommended Reading Recommended Reading

Published: 11 March 2013 11 March 2013

Hits: 15637 15637

So You Want an Education

So you want an education.  You wake up one day and realize, "How did I get to be this age, and I have learned so little, read so little."  This is one of those crises which often happens, and it is a good thing.  But what do you do?  My short answer is: read, read, read.  And then read, read, read.  Spend less time (very little time) in front of a television, and simply read.  If you have a fire place, light a fire.  Then get a book, and simply start reading.

I am not all that sure it is particularly important where you start.  C.S. Lewis said in his classic essay, "Learning in War-Time" (I have linked it under "Recommended Readings") that you might try reading at least one "old" book for every three contemporary books.  Not a bad idea.  You might pick up a wonderful book by James V. Schall, Another Sort of Learning.  This book has the wonderful sub-title: Selected Contrary Essays on How Finally to Acquire an Education While Still in College or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated Advice about How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together with Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found.  Now that is a sub-title!  The book is made up of a number of short chapters with titles like "Why Read?", "What a Student Owes His Teacher," and many more. Each chapter concludes with a wonderful short list of recommended readings (and the book concludes with a longer bibliography including all--I believe--of the books recommended throughout Schall's fine book).

But the bottom line, simply start reading.  Tonight the children and I sat in the den (there was some lying down as well) simply reading.  We read Scripture (we are reading slowly through the book of Romans), and then we read some out of Tolkien's The Two Towers.  I hope and pray that my children are cultivating the habit of reading, and that it will be a joyous habit throughout their lifetime.

There are also lots of lists out there.  Here is one that might be useful.  There is a wonderful web site called The Imaginative Conservative. If your political inclinations are not conservative, do not let the web site title scare you off.  If your understanding of "conservative" has been formed by the main currents of American political and media discourse, you might find some (most? all?) of the essays at The Imaginative Conservative quite illuminating.  But particularly helpful is the "Book Store" that one can find at the web site.  Here is a wonderful collection/list of books under various themes.

Again, the bottom line is to read.  Don't forfeit the opportunity to develop one of the greatest gifts--and it is a gift--that God has given you, your mind.  Get off the beaten path.  Unplug from what Richard Weaver called "The Great Stereoptican" (in Ideas Have Consequences).   Don't let marketing agents in L.A. and New York be the interior decorator of your children's souls (or your soul).  We all need what C.S. Lewis called "the fresh sea-breeze" of the past to blow through our lives.  And much of this sea-breeze comes through books--and old books, as Lewis argued.

Life is too short to be spent watching the latest offering on the television.  Take up and read.

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Category: Recommended Reading Recommended Reading

Published: 27 February 2013 27 February 2013

Hits: 9603 9603

King Lincoln

In light of the recent release of the Lincoln movie, here is an excellent essay by Joe Sobran on "King Lincoln".  It can be accessed here.

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Category: Recommended Reading Recommended Reading

Published: 17 December 2012 17 December 2012

Hits: 10034 10034

Is America Too Big?

Is America too big?  In this fascinating video, Donald Livingston and Kirkpatrick Sale raise an interesting question: is America simply too big?  Livingston has thought long and hard about this issue, and Sale is the author of one of the most seminal works published on the question of human scale.  The video can be viewed here.

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Category: Recommended Reading Recommended Reading

Published: 11 December 2012 11 December 2012

Hits: 8556 8556