A profound analysis of the terrifying technological project on which our world has embarked—and the ancient myth it recapitulates.Digital technology is hijacking our attention, colonizing our consciousness, harvesting our personal data, and destroying our souls. We have become a nation of addicts, unable to turn away from the glowing light of those digital devices which enchant and possess us. Furthermore, our disease is facilitating the greatest concentration of power in history—e...

A proletarianized citizenry ruled by a class of insolent plutocrats is incompatible with the republican form of government established by the US Constitution. Without an effective majority of citizens who own property and whose character has been shaped by property ownership--a vibrant middle class--the Founders' Constitution will not survive. Our current age of Plutocratic Socialism is a specific manifestation of a pathology the Founders feared. Recovery must begin with a simple, yet prof...

In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful.The Limits of Liberalism identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place. Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person—the libe...

In the United States the conventional left/right distinction has become increasingly irrelevant, if not harmful. The reigning political, cultural, and economic visions of both the Democrats and the Republicans have reached obvious dead ends. Liberalism, with its hostility to any limits, is collapsing. So-called Conservatism has abandoned all pretense of conserving anything at all. Both dominant parties seem fundamentally incapable of offering coherent solutions for the problems that beset ...

In the first half of the twentieth century, the rationalist tide had reached its high mark in the arts, politics, and work. But the Holocaust, the Gulag, and other failures have dimmed the popularity of rationalism. However, the evidence of those practical failures would not have been as convincing as it was if not for the existence of a theoretical diagnosis of the malady. This book compares and contrasts the ideas of some of the leading twentieth-century critics of rationalism: Hans-Geor...

Many Americans are longing for alternative politics rooted in strong communities, recognition of limits, and respect for the natural world. These issues are not the possession of one political party. Rather, they refer to ideas rooted deeply in the best aspects of our common tradition, and they represent yearnings that many, regardless of political affiliation, share. This book articulates a cultural and political vision that leads one off the couch and into the garden, out of the shopping...

Where did they come from, these furiously self-righteous "social justice warriors"?Having declared that "God is dead," Friedrich Nietzsche identified the "will to power" as the fundamental force of human life. There is no good or evil in a Nietzschean world—only the interests of the strong. Reason and the common good have no place there.As Nietzsche's ideas have permeated our culture, a new generation of radicals has embraced the rhetoric and tactics of the will to power. B...

A collection of essays that sets forth the moral principles of Objectivism, Ayn Rand's controversial, groundbreaking philosophy.Since their initial publication, Rand's fictional works—Anthem, The Fountainhead, and *Atlas Shrugged—*have had a major impact on the intellectual scene. The underlying theme of her famous novels is her philosophy, a new morality—the ethics of rational self-interest—that offers a robust challenge to altruist-collectivist ...

It is not only in our dark hours that scepticism, relativism, hypocrisy, and nihilism dog ethics. Whether it is a matter of giving to charity, or sticking to duty, or insisting on our rights, we can be confused, or be paralysed by the fear that our principles are groundless. Many are afraid that in a Godless world science has unmasked us as creatures fated by our genes to be selfish and tribalistic, or competitive and aggressive. Simon Blackburn, author of the best-selling Think, structure...

What does it mean to be a conservative in an age so sceptical of conservatism? How can we live in the presence of our 'canonized forefathers' at a time when their cultural, religious and political bequest is so routinely rejected? With soft left-liberalism as the dominant force in Western politics, what can conservatives now contribute to public debate that will not be dismissed as pure nostalgia? In this highly personal and witty book, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explains how to li...

This collection communicates Rand's singular worldview and its penetrating impact on cultural and political analysisBetween 1961, when she gave her first talk at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and 1981, when she gave the last talk of her life in New Orleans, Ayn Rand spoke and wrote about topics as varied as education, medicine, Vietnam, and the death of Marilyn Monroe. In The Voice of Reason, these pieces, written in the last decades of Rand's life, are g...

From the theologian President Barack Obama cites as one of his favorite philosophers, "the most important book ever written on foreign policy" (Andrew J. Bacevich, from the introduction).Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr's masterpiece on the incongr...