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Please join us by making your donation today in celebration of our 15th anniversary year. Every contribution—whether $1500, $150, or $15—joins with our labor and prayer to restore the best of Christendom. —W. Winston Elliott, Publisher
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An Electronic Inklings
I remember it well. Fifteen years ago, on a hot, humid summer afternoon in Houston. Winston Elliott treated me to a hamburger, fries, and an iced tea at Five Guys (my first experience there). We talked intensely about the state of conservatism—where it had come from, exactly what it was, and where it was going. We especially talked about our pantheon of heroes—Kirk, Nisbet, Tolkien, Lewis, Dawson, Cather, etc. But we also talked about those who alive now claimed allegiance to these disparate figures. There were a lot of us, but we were spread out throughout the western world, and there was little chance we could come together easily in the same geographic place.
Over the previous decade, though, through the Free Enterprise Institute, Winston had assembled quite a group of thinkers and scholars. We had been meeting yearly near Houston or near Lake Conroe. At Five Guys that summer afternoon, we brainstormed. How could we continue to bring together so many women and men to keep talking about things that mattered—the good, the true, and the beautiful—without actually being in the same geographic location. Again, we were in Texas, Michigan, England, California, Poland, etc.
And, just to set the scene. I had a hardbound notebook with me, taking copious notes, but we even drew on napkins that afternoon. I had been deeply influenced by Christopher Dawson and Tom Burns and their classic Christian humanist series in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Essays in Order, as well as T.S. Eliot’s The Criterion. I was thinking of trying to figure out a way to publish beautiful things in a compact format—a complicated academic newsletter, fully footnoted. Winston had a better idea. What if we created an insular journal on the Web in which each of the members—spread throughout the world—could communicate with one another electronically through the internet. We could form a small community, an electronic Inklings, if you will.
We also wrestled with what to call it. Fifteen years ago, Winston was definitely more of a traditionalist conservative than I was, and I was much more of a free-market libertarian. How could we bridge this friendly divide in the journal? We wanted to be broadly conservative, but not necessarily fusionist. Inspired by the Muses, Winston came upon the idea of calling it The Imaginative Conservative, TIC. The term came from Benjamin Disraeli by way of Paul Elmer More by way of Russell Kirk.
Such a title would allow us to be both traditional and open to the market, without embracing anything that resembled something ideology. After all, we both believed, all ideologies are inhumane, creepy, and destructive. We wanted open discussion. Not relativist, but open to a variety of viewpoints. And, while we were happy to have politics, we never saw the website as a political website. It was, first and foremost, meant to be cultural, theological, and literary. That is, we wanted to embrace the humanities completely. If we became political, we wanted culture, religion, or literature to inform them. Though we were (Winston) slightly more traditionalist and (Brad) slightly more libertarian, we agreed completely that we both Christian Humanists, a happy, non-ideological alliance of anti-progressives! Our anchors were Socrates, Cicero, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sir Thomas More, and Edmund Burke.
From the beginning, I would be the writer and Winston would be the editor. Indeed, I’ve had almost no editorial role over the last 15 years, except to pass on pieces from other authors to Winston and Steve Klugewicz (another mighty and brilliant editor) and to recommend new authors. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve had the grand privilege of writing over 800 essays for a total of close to a million words. I’ve written on all my heroes, my favorite historical moments, my favorite bands, my favorite movies, and my favorite novels. It’s been, for me, personally glorious.
Along the way, we have lost a few of our TIC authors (most notably Steve Masty, Eva Brann, and Stratford Caldecott), but I’ve been so blessed to write not only next to those who have passed beyond this world, but also next to our two extraordinary editors, Barbara Elliott, Gleaves Whitney, Ben Lockerd, Bruce Frohnen, David Deavel, Joseph Pearce (who has inspired by own writing career in a million ways), Father Dwight Longenecker, John Willson, Dan Sundahl, Andrew Seeley, John Hittinger, Christine Norvell, and others.
I was at a joint Hillsdale/Heritage event back in late April. When I was introduced as a speaker, the person who introduced me noted that I was co-founder and senior contributor to The Imaginative Conservative. A few people clapped and one woman gasped, quietly whispering, “I love TIC.” I can’t even count any more how often I’ve heard various people praise the website. I’ve even met a few people who identified as “TIC conservatives.” Such praise always warms my heart. And, frankly, whatever role I’ve played, I’ve gained immensely from my association with TIC, and I always thanks God above for my friendship with Winston Elliott, his genius, and his tenacity. He truly is the spirit behind 15 years of success.
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Culture Drives Politics
Historian though I may claim to be, I don’t recall the year that I became aware of the existence of The Imaginative Conservative. It must have been close to a decade or more ago now. It likely was just before I journeyed to Houston to bring G.K. Chesterton to Houston Baptist University. (Amazingly enough, or perhaps not so amazingly enough, over the years of performing as GKC I found that he was much more welcome—and much better known—at places of higher learning such as Houston Baptist, or Biola, or Taylor or Baylor than at many “Catholic” universities. But that is another story.)
In any case, I was sufficiently aware of TIC to also have been aware of its Houston connection and of Winston Elliott and Steve Klugewicz. In fact, Winston had seen this current version of “Chesterton” in action at his summer conferences for teachers back in the early OO’s. But Steve had not. At least not until my visit to The Saint Constantine School in Houston. Or should that be “Chesterton’s” visit?
Following “Chesterton’s” presentation, Steve and I had a chance to visit. Whether he suggested that I do some writing for TIC, or I offered to try my hand at a piece or two, is also fuzzy in what’s left of my memory bank. But I already knew that I was going to be winding down as a teacher of American history and somewhat more gradually cutting back on my travels and performances as Chesterton and a few others. So why not do some more writing in the coming days and years.
If I have a writing specialty, it’s probably the book review. For many years I reviewed books for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. But it’s been much more fun, not to mention liberating, to write reviews for a conservative publication—no, make that an imaginatively conservative publication.
For me, the great thing about TIC is the great variety of subjects covered—and, in many instances, introduced to me. It may be fair to characterize TIC as relentlessly conservative, but it would not be fair to label it as being relentlessly single-minded, or, for that matter, for being relentlessly political.
One of my many failings is my tendency to be all too political when it comes to both my reading and my writing. And here I am referring to both topics and point of view. TIC often tugs me away from all of that. Now it doesn’t hammer me away or even pull me away. It simply reminds me that there is much more to life—and to conservatism—than politics.
In a very real sense, TIC always seems to be on hand to remind me that culture drives politics, nay, that it precedes politics. So I suppose that in its own way TIC is also inevitably political, but it is political in a way that makes good sense. That is to say it keeps politics in its place, which is the sensible thing to do.
One of the dangers for those of us on the right is that we will become as consumed with politics and power as our friends on the left tend to be. That itself is a great danger, and one that is terribly important to avoid. But that, too, is another story.
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The Shop Around the Corner
In this ephemeral age of fleeting interests, social media obsessions, short attention spans, and rapid news cycles, crises one day are forgotten the next. We’re forever asking “How did that end?,” “What happened to him?”, “Did they ever figure that out?”, or “Where did she go?” But here and there amongst the cultural dross are steady guides who understand the world existed before yesterday. One of these, home of the permanent things since 2010, is The Imaginative Conservative.
Across 10,000 essays, TIC offers readers deep exploration of conservative ideas and its website showcases these wares with hanging shop shingles pointing patrons in the right direction: Conservatism, Culture, Books, Literature, Liberal Learning, and so on. Its writers come from all backgrounds, not just academia, and we all have our favorites. Mine is the prolific Mark Malvasi, whose historical essays are magnificent studies of American and European history. As an antebellum political historian, I read his recent essay on Dred Scott with wonderment at his ability to explain concisely a bewilderingly complex episode.
I’ve always been impressed by the sharpness of TIC readers. They comb through the essays closely and eagerly comment with questions, clarifications, and a hunger for more. My essay on the composer Arthur Foote brought kind comments from the family who now live on his farm, while another on historiography ignited a debate on conservatism and poststructuralism. My inbox fills with emails too, asking where to acquire the collected sermons of Sherrard Billings, expressing interest in the Washington Thanksgiving of 1859, and offering a simple thank you.
TIC is that old bookstore around the corner with those green Loeb Classical Library volumes you’ve been coveting, that small coffee shop or friendly pub where everybody knows your name, that family-run hardware with the nails and screws you need to fix heirlooms, that ancient jewelry workshop getting your grandfather’s watch ticking again, that treasured local church where your ancestors worshipped. You know where these are. George Scott-Montcrieff called it Burke Street:
It is not simply because a French King dined in one of its handsome small houses or a President of the United States may have slept in another, that made Burke Street important. Those are only spotlights of history, recalling dynasties and potentates, making connections in the mind. The importance of a handsome old street is partly aesthetic, but certainly also the substance of the tradition that it contains, preventing us from being mere wandering tinkers in the world.
The sign above the TIC door says “Open.” Come on in.
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A Communion of Writers and Readers
by David Deavel
Why is it that “community” is so irksome while “communion” is not? Perhaps because the former has been reduced from meaning “a group of people sharing common goods while living together” to something like “a group of people sharing some collection of common interests who can be organized along narrowly political lines or at least to whom we can market some stuff.”
“Communion” still has about it the philosophical and religious connotations of a sharing of life that is intimate, deep, and real. While a non-geographical community seems a contradiction in terms, a non-geographical spiritual and intellectual communion seems eminently feasible. We readers and writers can rarely help each other with cooking or driving to the doctor’s office. Yet, through the back-and-forth in the essays and comments at this site, we often partake in a real closeness of both mind and heart.
If the writers and readers of The Imaginative Conservative require a designation, it would be “communion.” As a writer here, I can tell you that my greatest joy is when a reader comments that what I have written has echoed in his or her mind or heart.
It’s true for polemical articles, certainly. When one sees naked emperors parading to loud acclaim of the color and texture of the royal garments, those refusing to acknowledge the delusion feel lonely and afraid to call out What Is What. My first article here appeared in 2013, but I became a regular in 2019—near high tide for the tsunami of woke only now abating in places. Many of my articles have been (shall we say) controversial. While disagreement can be irritating (you should know that orthodoxy is my doxy), comments indicating my position is clear and understandable even if the reader thought me wrong and, even better, seeing what I mean and agreeing are cheering—like the vision of a tattered flag still waving.
More powerful than agreement in times of rancor, however, are comments indicating that heart has spoken unto heart. Many of my essays have been eulogies or sketches of people I have read, encountered, and even loved. Responses to these essays, especially from people who knew the same person independently, always give me joy. One comment appended to my remembrance of my mentor Ed Ericson always gives me something more than pleasure to read. The writer explained that she did not share in the political conservatism that was part of the bond between Ed and me, yet she knew him, loved him, and found what she loved in my essay. “I found your article about him purely by chance while researching some of the things he had written about cults in his early academic life. It made me cry in how beautifully you wrote about the man who I was fortunate enough, like you, to have play a huge part in my life.”
It is for such moments of communion that the writer at The Imaginative Conservative writes.
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Fresh Air Blowing in the Fields
The year was 2010, and I was working a rather mundane office job in the nation’s capital. In my idle moments (of which there were many) I enjoyed perusing various conservative journals on the Web, but there was one that seemed different. I didn’t recall seeing it before but here it was, swelling with courtly and erudite commentary that was always referred to by the serious and appropriate name “essays.” It was called The Imaginative Conservative and, while it contained political commentary like the others, there was ample space for the things I most care about: philosophy and literature and art and music and religion. I could sense that this journal had a focus on worldview instead of mere ideology and that its conception of conservatism was broad and truly lowercase-c “catholic.” It was also clear to me that TIC (as I would eventually call it several years later) preserved the individual voice of its various authors, avoiding the sense of a journal as an airless self-enclosed world. There was plenty of fresh air blowing around the fields of TIC, I could tell.
When you’re in a conventional job and harbor intellectual interests, it’s hard to find an outlet. But the good Lord had a plan. A few years later I was laid off from the job, and hence found myself with a lot of time on my hands. I was through with the conventional life and resolved to try being a freelance writer. The only way to go about that is to do it, so I took a couple of years and—in addition to reading voraciously—wrote any kind of short-form prose I could, reviews and factual articles and even some essays, just to build a portfolio. The latter I submitted to this wonderful young conservative journal because I sensed we were on the same wavelength. The subject, as I recall, was inspired by my reading of Mr. Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence. To my surprise and delight my first submission was accepted, and then a second and then a third … all pro bono publico.
And the rest, as they say, is a mystery: one idyllic October day in 2018 our esteemed editor Mr. Klugewicz sent me a message to ask if I would like to be a regular Senior Contributor—a humbling title for a youngish and still newish writer. I was practically falling over the keyboard answering “yes.”
I still think the same about TIC now that I did in 2018, and back in 2010. I hope I have grown as a writer, perhaps loosened up a bit and cast off some of the academic armor that young writers are prone to put on. A toast to The Imaginative Conservative on 15 successful years of providing light in a dark and uncertain world, and long may it continue.
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Keep the Wonder Coming
by John Horvat
We have indeed reached a milestone with the fifteenth birthday of The Imaginative Conservative. So many magnificent articles have passed through this excellent portal. I have no doubt it plays a vital role in the national debate.
What makes The Imaginative Conservative so unique is not the conservative part of the equation. It is the challenge of being imaginative. Too often, the debate is limited to dry political or economic considerations, which, although necessary, are only part of what it means to be conservative.
Too often, we are encouraged to look only for the good and the true. Here is a forum that also boldly allows for the ample expression of the beautiful.
That intellectual daring is what is so refreshing about The Imaginative Conservative. We are invited to explore the whole picture. We can enter into that realm of poetic wisdom which Josef Pieper referred to as knowing “the ‘whither’ and the ‘whence,’ the origin and the end, the plan and the structure, the framework and the meaning of reality.”
What I enjoy about my daily visits to the site is that it covers all those bases. We are treated to the perennial wisdom of great figures of the past with citations from Russell Kirk, Churchill, Saint Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle. There is an overtone of the divine with the texts of saints and the broaching of religious themes.
Rather than any particular author, I am impressed by the whole. I know I can always go to Joseph Pearce’s biographical sketches, Stephen Klugewicz’s music appreciations, the philosophical musings of the late Eva Bann or David Deavel’s spiritual commentaries. There is just enough content from new authors to freshen up the selection and awaken wonder and surprise.
What I like about writing for The Imaginative Conservative is the freedom it gives me to write about cultural matters rarely broached by other, more politically conservative sites. Whether it be a commentary on whisky (without the e), manners of dress or the value of a mother’s lullaby, I know the editors consider these matters not only important but crucial.
Congratulations on reaching this milestone. Keep the wonder coming. It is worth it.
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Defying Labels
Aware that there are common conservatives, conman conservatives, crunchy conservatives, crazy conservatives, creepy conservatives, Catholic conservatives, Coca-cola conservatives (sweet, fizzy and without nutrition), and any number of other categories of conservatives, it was with first interest, and then enthusiasm that I first heard of The Imaginative Conservative. I, for one, normally eschew labels—preferring to keep people guessing. As such The Imaginative Conservative soubriquet caught my… well, imagination. Surely to be an Imaginative Conservative was, by definition, defying labels.
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Ideas Still Matter
by Mark Malvasi
The United States and the world have changed dramatically in the fifteen years since The Imaginative Conservative came into being. Today our politics call into question the value of ideas, the efficacy of truth, and, indeed, a shared understanding of reality in ways that were unimaginable fifteen years ago. These circumstances have often brought out our worst and have encouraged us to think the worst of each other.
The essays published in The Imaginative Conservative continue to demonstrate that ideas still matter, that truth, although at times difficult and elusive, is not simply an ideological expedient conjured to serve the needs of the moment, that reasoned discourse and polite disagreement are indispensable to civilized life. In short, The Imaginative Conservative defends the life of the mind against all who would ignore or defame it. The writers whose essays grace its pages ask serious questions, provide honest and original, if not always easy or fashionable, answers, and bring to the forefront of discussion what Russell Kirk called “the permanent things,” those perennial values the every generation must rediscover and those enduring questions that every generation must pose if life is to have meaning and purpose.
As evidence that The Imaginative Conservative welcomes diverse points of view, I offer myself. Anyone who has read even a few of my contributions will realize that I am not a conservative. (I am also not the liberal or progressive for which some mistake me, but that discussion is best left for another day.) A respectful, and at times an admiring, critic of traditional conservative thought, I have enjoyed the rare freedom to make my arguments and to support my conclusions without interference or restriction of any sort. That generosity of spirit alone distinguishes The Imaginative Conservative as a beacon to light our way through the dark times in which we live. May its beam continue to shine for many, many years to come.
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Fifteenth Anniversary Favourites
Our esteemed editor has invited the Senior Contributors to celebrate The Imaginative Conservative’s 15th birthday with a brief reflection on our involvement with TIC and its influence, as well as inviting us to select a few of our favourite essays from the thousands of essays that have been published since TIC’s “birth” in 2010.
Subjectively speaking, I have found my relationship with TIC to be an unmitigated blessing. I value and relish the freedom it gives me to write on anything and everything that is prompted by the Muse. This is due, in part, to the fact that it is catholic but not Catholic. It is catholic, small c, in the sense that it is truly universal in the scope of its “imaginative conservatism”, enabling the contributors to write on the multifarious and multifaceted aspects of culture: history, politics, economics, religion, philosophy and the arts. With respect to the last of these, TIC encourages discussion of the arts in all its manifestations: poetry, narrative and lyric; prose, fictional and non-fictional; the visual arts, sacred and profane; music, sacred and profane, classical and romantic; architecture, Romanesque and Gothic. Ballet… sculpture … film… It’s all part of TIC’s catholicity.
With respect to Catholicism, upper case C, it is not a secret that many of us are Catholic, either of the convert or cradle variety. I respect the respect in which TIC holds the Catholic Church and its teaching but I rejoice nonetheless, and to reiterate, that we have many non-Catholic contributors and that TIC is catholic in the other sense of the word.
Objectively speaking, I believe that the cultural impact of The Imaginative Conservative has been considerable. It has engaged the culture with the edifying power of goodness, truth and beauty, and with the gravitas of tradition. In an age of wickedness, falsehood and ugliness, TIC has been a beacon of light and life.
As for my favourite essays from the almost 10,000 from which to choose, I will not name any of the almost 800 that I have written myself, thereby ignoring and sidestepping the editor’s request that I do so, though I hope that they are all worth reading. Instead, and succumbing to a far healthier (and safer!) bias, I am going to choose several of the essays that my wife Susannah has written over the years. Truth be told, were I to indulge myself, I’d choose all eleven! Since, however, I should rein myself in, I’ll settle for indulging nothing but my addiction to alliteration and will choose five favourites: “Jane Austen Forever!”, “Orwell’s Rare Happy Ending”, “More Powers to You: The Supernatural Thrillers of Tim Powers”, “Confessions of a Late Blooming Lover of Great Literature” and “Great Books I Wouldn’t Want to Be In (And Some I Would!)”. The last of these warrants a place in any list of favourites for the whimsicality of the title itself, as well as the imaginativeness of its theme!
As for Susannah herself, she chooses my colleague Bradley J. Birzer as her favourite TIC author. To question her judgment is a little difficult considering that she judged me to be a suitable spouse, albeit an unworthy one. Who am I to judge her judgment? More to the point, as a wise and prudent husband, who am I to argue?
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For your consideration:
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The featured image is “Hip, Hip, Hurrah! Artists’ Party, Skagen” (between 1887 and 1888), by Peder Severin Krøyer, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
