The After Dinner Scholar

America at 250, Episode 7: Economics, Entrepreneurship, and the American Character with Fr. Robert Sirico

While the Revolutionary War—as expected—ruined the economy, the lessons learned in the Colonial period, the habits of most Americans, and the entrepreneurial spirit of a new nation led to previously unheard of human flourishing and prosperity.

Our guest this week is Fr. Robert Sirico, founder and president emeritus of The Acton Institute. Fr. Sirico has long been a defender of the free-market system that built the American economy—from the very beginning.

America at 250, Episode 6: A Tale of Two Revolutions--American and French with Dr. Joseph Loconte

The French Revolution that began in 1789 like the American Revolution that began in 1776 were both revolts against a king and against despotic rule. Both sought the expansion of human liberty and both intended to form republican governments. But that’s where the similarity stops and the contrast between the American Revolution and the French Revolution could not be starker. What made the difference?

Our guest this week, Dr. Joseph Loconte, addressed this question at a conference at The Institute of Faith and Freedom at Grove City College, Dr. Joseph Loconte, director of The Rivendell Center in New York City in a lecture entitled “Reason, Revelation, and Revolution.”

America at 250, Episode 5: George Washington, "The Indispensable Man" with Dr. Virginia Arbery

General Washington served as Commander-in-Chief from July 15, 1775 to the end of the War for Independence and was relieved on December 23, 1783—eight and a half years. After that he served eight years as our first president—with all the attending problems of a new nation—from 1789 to 1797. And he was, as historian James Thomas Flexner titled his biography: Washington: The Indispensable Man.

There are few Americans who admire Washington as much as Wyoming Catholic College professor Dr. Virginia Arbery, our guest this week.

America at 250, Episode 4: Natural Law and Natural Rights with Dr. Hadley Arkes

The purpose of the Declaration of Independence, wrote Thomas Jefferson, was “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; [in] terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we [were] compelled to take.”

To make their case they called on “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” on a Creator who endows humans with “inalienable rights” including the right to abolish a tyrannical government and replace it.

Natural law and natural rights were central to the founders’ thinking and I know of no one more qualified to help us understand why that’s true than Dr. Hadley Arkes.

America at 250, Episode 3: The Catholic Roots of American Independence with Dr. Jim Tonkowich

The Catholic Church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries defended monarchy and so many assume that "the divine right of kings" was a Catholic idea. But it wasn't. So, if the Catholic Church didn’t teach the divine right of kings, what did it teach about civil government and what could that have to do with the Second Continental Congress of thirteen English colonies in North America declaring, “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved”?

America at 250, Episode 2: The Declaration of Independence and the American Mind with Dr. Matthew Spalding

In his new book, The Making of the American Mind: The Story of Our Declaration of Independence, Hillsdale College professor Dr. Matthew Spalding writes,“We must know the Declaration if we truly are to love America.”

This week, Dr. Spalding explains how that's the case and how the Declaration expresses the American mind.

 

 

America at 250, Episode 1: Setting the Stage for 1776

Ten weeks and two days from today, we will celebrate America’s Semiquincentennial, the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. In honor of that event and in order to think more carefully about this our “experiment in ordered liberty” two and a half centuries later, we welcome you to this, the first of ten special After-Dinner Scholar podcasts from Wyoming Catholic College about the American founding.

While the Declaration was signed in July 1776, the "shot heard around the world" was fired 15 months earlier in April 1775. Dr. Glenn Arbery, Dr. Michael Wilmer, and Dr. Jim Tonkowich explore some of the history of those 15 months.

On Podcasting with Dr. Jim Tonkowich

The first After-Dinner Scholar podcast on February 1, 2017 began:

The 16^th century English philosopher, statesman and scientist Francis Bacon famously stated, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is,” he went on to explain, “some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” 

Much to my surprise, that first podcast was seven and a half years, 390 episodes, and more than 205,000 downloads ago. And as of this episode, I’m hanging up my headphones and (for the most part) my mortarboard.

Links:

The Eucharist Podcast with Wyoming Catholic College

Mars Hill Audio Journal

Dr. Jim Tonkowich at The Stream

 

Dante's Divine Comedy - 2 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Last week Dr. Tiffany Schubert discussed Inferno, the first book of Dante’s Comedy. Our friend and former colleague Jason Baxter remarked that in Inferno, “Dante’s poetic violence is meant to melt down the hard heart so that it can be reforged into something new.”

Purgatorio is the place where that melted down and malleable heart finds the forge, the place where the hammer of suffering purges all impurities and fashions our hard hearts into hearts perfected.

And finally Paradiso shows us the path of choosing the good, true, and beautiful habitually as we gaze on the Face of God eternally “lost,” as the hymnwriter put it, “in wonder, love, and praise.”

Dante's Divine Comedy - 1 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Midway in the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

for the straight way was lost.

Ah, how hard it is to tell

the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh—

the very thought of it renews my fear!

It is so bitter death is hardly more so. (Inferno 1.1-7)

During Lent and now during Easter, our sophomores, under the guidance of Dr. Tiffany Schubert, have been reading Dante's Divine Comedy in their humanities class. And while that reading is academic, no one can avoid Dante’s emphasis throughout the poem on our spiritual lives.