Anthony Esolen – American Greatness

Single-Sex Education: A Tradition to Reconsider?

Anthony Esolen — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 07:00:13 +0000

The last time I was a member of an officially male group, I was 12 and in the Little League. After that, I shied away […]

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The Leaky Bucket

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 07:00:38 +0000

I have spent many years reading, writing, and thinking about family life and what kinds of things are good and innocent, healthy and soul-building, in […]

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Blood Insanity

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Behold the planet Haemos. It is a fortunate place. There’s plenty of high-protein grain to make bread, plenty of dairy animals for milk, butter, and […]

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From Enlightenment to Ignorance: Society’s Dangerous Embrace of Stupidity

Anthony Esolen — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 08:00:01 +0000

What would be the state of a society in which a will to stupidity were united with a will to power? When I first decided […]

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Exploring Locke’s Legacy: Government, Property, and the Capitalistic Vision

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 10:00:50 +0000

In our Humanities class at Thales College this semester, we have just finished reading and discussing John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, that text so […]

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From Palliser to Primaries: Bemoaning the Lack of Thoughtful Leadership in the New Hampshire Primary

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 10:00:08 +0000

The New Hampshire primary will be here in less than two weeks. I am thinking of writing in my preferred candidate for president: Plantagenet Palliser, […]

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Someday, We Can Have a Serious Political Discussion of What God’s Presence Means

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 10:00:36 +0000

It is Christmastime again in America, and that means the usual round of quarrels over what right a national government of 330 million people has […]

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Returning to Rockwell’s ‘Saying Grace’ America

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 10:00:51 +0000

Three score and twelve years ago, the Saturday Evening Post featured a cover for Thanksgiving illustrated by the celebrated and much-loved Norman Rockwell. It is […]

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Let There Be Nations; Let There be Hosts and Guests

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 10:00:41 +0000

What should Armenia’s immigration policy be? I wrote “Armenia,” not “America,” figuring that the eye and the mind would suffer a bit of a hitch. […]

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Is It Our Government? Or Their Government?

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 10:00:36 +0000

If you were an archaeologist ten thousand years from now, searching through the rubble of our civilization, how could you tell what Americans thought of […]

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Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Waverley’ Inverse to Hollywood’s ‘Barbie’

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 09:45:25 +0000

I don’t suppose it’s a surprise to anyone that Hollywood has made a movie about a plastic doll named Barbie. Hollywood these days is in […]

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If We See the Constitution in its Proper Light, We May Begin to Honor it Again

Anthony Esolen — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 10:00:28 +0000

Much is to be forgiven of youth. When I was an undergraduate at Princeton, full of my own foolish ideas, I got into an argument […]

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Perpetual Adolescence

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 10:00:08 +0000

I have been an inveterate fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals ever since their flashy team, long on power pitching, speed on the bases and […]

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Nothing, No Place, and No One

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:10:17 +0000

I am glad that the recent case involving the creative designer in Colorado was decided correctly, as the justices of the Supreme Court determined that […]

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No God, No Culture

Anthony Esolen — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 02:59:16 +0000

What was the inflection point for Western civilization in general, and American culture in particular, after which teachers took it upon themselves to ignore their […]

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Jabba the State and Kanamit, Inc. Seek to Serve Man

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 03:01:31 +0000

Last Sunday, while I was watching a prestigious golf tournament on television, I could not help being struck by the need corporate advertisers seem to […]

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To Love the Nearer Things

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 22 May 2023 03:04:56 +0000

When my mother attended our town’s public high school, a long enough time ago, everyone had to take a course in Pennsylvania history. The first […]

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An Inhuman Ugliness

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 08 May 2023 03:04:53 +0000

Imagine someone manning a loaded machine gun at the back of the House chamber in the Capitol Building. He is following the proceedings with what […]

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Our Politics of Everything and Nothing

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 03:03:19 +0000

Aristotle famously said that political science isn’t for the young, because youth lack the broad human experience needed to make prudential judgments for the common […]

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The Waste of Our Ignorant Age

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 03:03:05 +0000

There was a time when American manhood stood up for law, order, liberty, tradition, the vigorous expansion of man’s power by scientific, technological, and agricultural […]

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Are We a Population or a People?

Anthony Esolen — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 04:00:38 +0000

I am trying to imagine what it would be like if I should take up residence in India, and, because I am not a Hindu […]

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What’s Wrong With Nationalism?

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 04:03:40 +0000

Pope Francis, along with many other commentators on current affairs, has condemned nationalism. I might join these commentators, if I knew just what they were […]

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A Massive Effort at Moral Rebuilding Is Necessary

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 04:04:34 +0000

When the Reverend Samuel Dike and his colleagues inaugurated the National Divorce Reform League in 1881, it was because they saw that the rate of […]

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A Winter Eden

Anthony Esolen — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 04:02:29 +0000

When I was a boy in Pennsylvania, we had some cold and snowy winters, and back then, that meant sledding. One of the town’s workmen, […]

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Read Something Other Than Current Politics

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 04:03:11 +0000

American professors who call themselves liberals almost always do one of three things when it comes to reading old books. They ditch them, they disparage […]

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The Bad Faith Arguments Against Marriage Defenders

Anthony Esolen — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 04:01:43 +0000

It would be an interesting investigation to reverse the names of every major bill passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, and […]

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Advent

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 04:01:15 +0000

I suppose everybody’s noticed that Christmas sales are advertised on television long before Thanksgiving, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an “Advent Sale” or […]

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Reflect on the New Sins—and the Old

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 04:04:30 +0000

The other day, I made a comment on Antisocial Media to the effect that you should read old books because their characteristic errors will not […]

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Concord Hymn

Anthony Esolen — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 03:00:04 +0000

Want to know how poetry used to be a part of American popular culture? On October 3, 1951, at the Polo Grounds in New York, […]

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Italy for Italians, America for Americans

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 03:03:07 +0000

It was 1983, I was 24 and single, and I had gone backpacking in Italy, by myself, for about three months. I made my way […]

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Memory

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 03:02:07 +0000

My earliest memory, at least the earliest that my mother can set a date on, was 60 years ago now, in 1962, in the summer. […]

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘The Village Blacksmith’

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 03:00:05 +0000

Our poem this week is one that every schoolchild in America used to know, as it had entered the hearts and minds of the people, […]

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Robert Frost’s ‘After Apple Picking’

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 03:01:36 +0000

The scent of apples ripening on trees, and overripe, falling to the street, sometimes to be eaten by one of us neighborhood kids, more often […]

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A Hymnal for American Youth, Yesterday and Today

Anthony Esolen — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 03:04:31 +0000

I have before me a copy of the Hymnal for American Youth, edited by Henry Augustine Smith, Professor of Church Worship, Music, Hymnody and Pageantry, […]

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American Church

Anthony Esolen — Sun, 25 Sep 2022 03:04:40 +0000

Sometimes it’s good to get away from the mire and noise of American politics for a while, to clear the head and return to reality—that […]

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Red Biden’s Humility Problem

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 03:03:24 +0000

By now, most Americans have seen at least a photo of Joe Biden standing in front of an infernally red light, glowing and flashing with […]

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A Greater Nationalism

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 03:04:01 +0000

The year was 1876, the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, and a young Pole, a promising author, was traveling through the United States with […]

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Haunter of Old Places

Anthony Esolen — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 03:04:46 +0000

I am an inveterate haunter of old places. I grew up among them, and I have never desired to see them obliterated, even when people […]

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Who Wants that Castle Down?

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 03:03:59 +0000

The scene is from Taylor Caldwell’s 1980 novel Answer as a Man, about the suffering we bring on ourselves and our fellows. It is 1912, and […]

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Is America Raising a Generation of Idiots?

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 03:04:14 +0000

“I hate everyone who doesn’t like me,” says little Anthony Fremont, who has held the whole town of Peaksville in terror. That is because he […]

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Sing, America!

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 03:04:57 +0000

A few days ago, the Supreme Court decided that a football coach at a public high school could say a prayer at midfield after the […]

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Our Dark Age

Anthony Esolen — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 03:03:10 +0000

On Friday, as I wrote these words, the Supreme Court set aside its egregious and constitutionally unfounded decision in Roe v. Wade, which elevated abortion […]

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Can Republicans Save the Middle Class?

Anthony Esolen — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 03:00:31 +0000

Right now, Americans are experiencing the dire effects of the most regressive and unjust tax of all: government-engineered and government-fueled inflation. Let us consider the […]

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Shifting Away from the Liberalism of the Zipper

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 26 May 2022 03:04:17 +0000

By now, I suppose everyone who pays attention to the matter has seen the Pelvic Left in the sweats, with a decision from the Supreme […]

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The World Does Not Run on Magic

Anthony Esolen — Mon, 09 May 2022 03:00:56 +0000

At a recent hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, the CEO of Colonial Pipeline made an admission which illustrates quite well our negligence […]

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The Great and Unreliable Informant

Anthony Esolen — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 03:05:28 +0000

There was a dust-up recently when a group of Christians on an airplane on Easter Sunday got out a guitar and began to sing Christian […]

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The Habit of Cultivating Mediocre Judgment

Anthony Esolen — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 03:03:12 +0000

Recently, I was taken to task for saying that Maya Angelou was a mediocre poet. People called me ignorant. I’ve read poetry in 10 languages, […]

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Chivalry Is Dead? No Kidding

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 03:04:22 +0000

The age of chivalry is gone, they say. If we think of it as an individual wrong, it isn’t much, that a certain Mr. Thomas […]

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Who Will Be America’s Teachers?

Anthony Esolen — Sun, 20 Mar 2022 03:04:07 +0000

The essential quality of a teacher, I have long believed, is the desire to share what he has found of the true or good or […]

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Rejecting ‘America’ for the Sake of America

Anthony Esolen — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 04:04:16 +0000

In 1985, I was a young man touring Italy by myself, as dark-skinned as someone whose people came from Calabria and the Campagna is going […]

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