On June 1-3, 2023, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters, a group of conservative intellectuals, concerned citizens, and traditionalist think tankers, will gather at the College Park Marriott in College Park, MD, just outside our nation’s capital, to discuss the urgent need to rebuild our social institutions.
We invite readers of The Imaginative Conservative to join us.
The Academy of Philosophy and Letters was founded in recognition that the direction of society is set by its most deeply held beliefs and aspirations. These are molded by culture in the broad sense, as represented by universities, the arts, churches, publishing, museums, and entertainment. Acting on the minds, imaginations, and moral-spiritual sensibilities of a society’s members, the culture shapes their general perception of reality and their likes and dislikes—for good or ill.
Politics does not operate independently of the culture but reflects it. Though politics can also shape culture, being able to exert educational and other cultural influence is ultimately more important than winning elections. Major and long-range change presupposes a transformation of the culture.
Our annual conference is intended to provide a venue where traditionalist conservatives and others endowed with the moral imagination of Irving Babbitt and Russell Kirk may gather to discuss important issues of culture, society, and politics free of ideological cant.
The theme of the 2023 conference is aptly titled, “Picking Up the Pieces: Rebuilding a Viable Culture.” Much discourse over the last several years has been on American decline. Every level in every sector of government and society has failed in its basic tasks. The institutions of politics, religion, economy, society are all in crisis. The engines of the American economy are sputtering, apparently incapable of adjusting in a productive way to new economic realities. Advances in technology thought a healthy stimulus to social mobility, seem instead to have worn away the social bonds and living spaces essential to healthy community.
Declining trust in our social institutions is exceeded only by the plummeting trustworthiness of those institutions. Religious organizations of all denominations have been embroiled in scandals and complicit in political intrigue of all sorts. Politicians are openly corrupt, enriching friends and family like the oligarchs of old. In cinema and literature, there is less reason for outrage than boredom. Banality is the rule in the era of wokeness, perpetual remakes, and derivative sequels. The American conservative movement has lost its leavening influence and appears to have finally cracked up, just as its critics long predicted.
Our society is indeed in pieces. If at the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was convinced that the sun upon Washington’s chair was rising, we can now fear that it is finally setting.
Nonetheless, the godfather of American conservatism, Russell Kirk, wrote that conservatives’ work in the world is often that of salvaging, of picking up the pieces. For Kirk, the conservative has a talent for rearticulating permanent principles to fit the times. In other words, for us, eras of turmoil are eras of opportunity. Eras of destruction are followed by eras of imaginative reconstruction. That is what the Academy of Philosophy and Letters is all about.
What does it take to rebuild the American polity across the domains of politics, religion, economics, and society? This will be the primary question before the Academy this June.
Our keynote dinner speakers are always a highlight of the conference. We will be joined by two imaginative conservatives. On Thursday night, Christopher Owen, author of Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall, will discuss “Democracy is Beautiful: Rebuilding Conservatism as if the People Matter.” (Read The University Bookman review here.) Friday night, Mark Mitchell, Front Porch Republic co-founder and author of Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class, will deliver a lecture titled “The Power of Property.” (Read The University Bookman review here.) You may view the full conference schedule here.
I invite you to join us as my guest. Registration is open (list me as your sponsor). Book your room at the College Park Marriott at our special discounted rate here.
I look forward to seeing you June 1-3 as we begin to “pick up the pieces” and rebuild our culture.
The Annual Meeting of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters
June 1-3, 2023
College Park Marriott
College Park, MD
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The featured image is “Independence Hall in Philadelphia” (1858-63) by Ferdinand Richardt, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.