Richard M. Weaver taught English for many years at the University of Chicago, returning home to Weaverville, North Carolina each summer to plow his ancestral land. Out of his love of language and devotion to tradition, Weaver developed profound insights into the nature and the purpose of life. Ideas Have Consequences is the fruit of these twin disciplines.

In what has become a classic work, Weaver asserts that the catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of unintelligent choice. The cure lies in the right use of man's reason, in the renewed acceptance of an absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas, like actions, have consequences.