Fall 2022 • Vol 17, No. 3

Art is like a lantern that we use to illuminate and clarify, spotlighting what’s important in life. Romantic Realism is a particular way of using that light, to see both what is and what could be. I now realize it is far more than just a theory of art—it is a whole approach to life.

Isabel Paterson considered herself the last survivor of a golden age. But she helped bequeath to us a vision of that free world—and not just a vision, but something more precious: a rational intellectual argument for it.

Rational people prize impartiality, fairness, and reasoned debate. The “woke” do not. What they demand is submission and obedience. A free and open society, where individual rights are respected and protected, cannot long survive if people cower in fear of losing their livelihoods for engaging in rational debate.

Most of us don’t know how or why music affects us the way it does, why we like the songs that we do. It’s the closest thing that we rational 21st-century people have to alchemy. But knowledge is power.

“The key to remaining an optimist,” says Norberg, “is to ignore politics, at least a little. . . . Read a science magazine to look at the interesting research and the innovations that are taking place. You’ll realize that even under the worst of circumstances, the worst politics and the nastiest tempers, people continue to improve the world.”

As a philosopher and energy expert, Epstein evaluates the methods employed by today’s opponents of fossil fuels, identifies their unstated assumptions, and penetrates to the core of this vital issue.

Robert Pierce Forbes’s painstaking research into the writing and revision of Notes on the State of Virginia is impressive and valuable. But his conjectures about Thomas Jefferson’s goals in writing those portions of the book that still stain the great man’s reputation only perpetuate the mysteries.

Despite some faults, Straight Line Crazy does an excellent job of bringing to modern audiences the harsh reality of how governments, even in wealthy, developed countries, can ride roughshod over people’s rights, rich and poor alike.

By giving us doorways into a wider world of art and ideas—and doing so without the backing of any major publishing houses—Luc Travers and Sandra Shaw have not only done us all a great service but have testified to the enormous value of art in all our lives.

Brazen, the story of how Julia Haart became an independent-minded, life-loving woman, is a welcome reminder of how rich and beautiful the world is—and why everyone should be free to enjoy it.

Racism is premised on the false and immoral idea that people’s minds are functions of their ancestry and, consequently, that a person’s accomplishments are less morally relevant than the color of his skin. But George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein shows in Classified that racism contains still another layer of incoherence.