Two months ago, I jammed my Mazda full of summer clothes, fishing gear, painting supplies, and southern fiction for a move to Frankfort, Kentucky where I have been working as an intern for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. My first task at the office was to organize the basement archives. I sorted through financials, programs, taxes, and bins of yellowed correspondence from former board members, editors, and writers. Buried in one of these boxes was a personal note with a sentence that caught my attention: “Chronicles is not a party organ, and I hope will never be. Our best service to the GOP is as a gadfly, not as a cheerleader.”

Although the magazine examines politics as well as culture, there is a notable variety of viewpoints on display. Many publications, in striving for unity (that is, different parts dedicated to a singular cause) achieve instead a kind of sad uniformity (identical parts marking in lockstep). But Chronicles does the work of men: It is not a manufacturing machine looking to delete faces liable to provoke disagreements. The magazine’s distinctive voices harmonize to the tune of something called paleoconservatism—which sees something of value in the things that have endured but invites real conversation about how to maintain them. This diversity of opinion gives readers an opportunity to engage, whetting their own thoughts and exercising freewill within a secure discipline.

During the school year, I will return to Grove City College, a conservative liberal arts school in Pennsylvania. They accept no federal funding and require every student to take their humanities course, which includes classes such as Western Civilization, Christian Civilization, Civilization of Literature, and Civilization of Arts. The professors of these classes do not cherry-pick what they teach: students read Nietzsche alongside Aristotle, Hume alongside Aquinas, Hitler alongside Reagan. Lazy readers sidestep opposing ideas or dismiss the topics that appear troubled and problematic. The active reader will wonder, approach, question, wrestle, and walk away enriched.

As individuals and as a nation, we are shaped by any number of pressures. Wendell Berry spoke to this in the June 1995 issue of Chronicles, which features his acceptance speech given upon receiving the Ingersoll Award. Berry begins with a question:

Putting aside inheritance, influence, inspiration, and many years of instruction, criticism, advice, help, and comfort from friends and loved ones, who remains to receive the award?

The implied answer is no one. If, as a civilization, we are encouraged to lay aside the conservative ideas that have shaped our country—like belief in divine authority, orders and classes, historical truths, adherence to tradition, and aversion to modification—then we too will be a nation of nobodies, unfit to wear any laurels and unworthy to taste the fruits of labor. The American will be no more.

This summer internship in Kentucky has given me a deeper appreciation not only for traditional approaches to government, philosophy, and literature, but also for traditional people in day-to-day life. I’ve experienced two solid months of southern hospitality. I’ve used a cane fishing pole and been taught how to catch catfish with an icy block of bloody chicken livers. I’ve listened to the stories of multiple nonagenarians on Vietnam, World War II, and even secondhand accounts of the Civil War.

It seems to me that the long-time symbiotic standard whereby we valued vigorous youth and revered the wisdom associated with age has collapsed. Instead, we have a vessel piloted by dangerously old oarsmen and youth who are counseled to turn away from generational knowledge and prize novelty and autonomy above the wisdom of the ages. I know that “conservative” means a lot more than “old” and that age, by itself, is not the crux of wisdom—but it has been good for me as a 21-year-old, to listen to the lessons, stories, and advice of the oldest generation alive today; if not strictly to follow them, then at least to wrestle with and be influenced by them.

Yesterday, I finished reading Dostoyevsky’s prophetic masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov. After being exposed to the bottomless complexity of the novel, I was surprised when I encountered sweet simplicity in the closing scene. Alyosha, the youngest Karamazov, joins hands with a group of grieving schoolboys after the burial of Ilyusha, their classmate and friend. He says, “Know then that there’s nothing more lofty, nor more powerful, nor more healthy, nor more useful later on in life than some good memory and particularly one that has been borne from childhood, from […] home.”

Early in the book, Father Zosima claims that “precious memories may remain even of a bad home, if only the heart knows how to find what is precious.”

Remembrance of our shared origins is paramount, our lifeboat as we pitch into the ever-unknown future. A reiteration of  cultural and moral fundamentals is found repeatedly in Chronicles’ news articles, book reviews, and profiles. As Russell Kirk writes, “…if [conservative order] is not able to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.” Undaunted by the fires, Chronicles has continued to sift through the ashes and build again.