Matt Purple, TAC managing editor: Few thinkers have influenced my political development more than Irving Babbitt; few thinkers have languished on my bookshelf for so long. Dr. Claes Ryn, my old professor at the Catholic University of America, who coaxed me away from neoconservatism and towards a more classically grounded conservatism, loved Babbitt and assigned us his work. Now, another CUA professor, Dr. William Smith, has written a book called Democracy and Imperialism, which applies Babbitt’s thought to our senseless overseas wars and which I’m reviewing for the print magazine. Maybe now I’ll finally pull Babbitt’s own intimidating tomes off the shelf again.

Are democracies doomed to become imperialistic? That’s the question Smith explores via Babbitt. A conservative scholar who influenced Russell Kirk, Babbitt held that the West had succumbed to, on one hand, the scientism of Francis Bacon, which had replaced moral law with science, and on the other, the Romanticism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which had caused it to become emotionally incontinent. These two strands had conspired to rob it of any sense of self-control. Babbitt believed firmly in the individual and his need for moral development. Man had to exercise what he called his “inner check,” using his will to keep his appetites in line. Without it, the results would be selfishness, depravity…perhaps forever war?

Democracy and Imperialism is so far a compelling read and I’m curious to see how Smith links Babbitt’s thought to America’s treading the path of empire. It makes me think of another democracy that whipped itself into a bloody frenzy, Athens during the Peloponnesian War. One of my favorite dramas from that period is Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, in which women persuade the Greek leaders to end the conflict by withholding sex from them. How do we stop our own wars? Stranger things have been suggested, that’s all I’m saying. I also just finished rereading Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth, a fun novel that mixes Cold War espionage with romance. McEwan is one of my favorite novelists, chiefly for his lovely and lexicomane writing voice. Amid all the screaming off of cable news, it’s nice to be in the presence of real elegance.