Here’s a taste:
Yesterday I rented a house in the historic district of St. Francisville, my hometown. I was on the phone with Mr. Walter, the owner, settling the terms. He was incredibly gracious, and I was tickled to learn…
September 2011
Alexandria, VA … On Monday night of this week, New York Times columnist David Brooks spoke at Georgetown University at the invitation of the program that I founded and direct, “The Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy.” A large
We are pleased to announce that John Schwenkler has joined our merry band and has agreed to edit an on-going series titled “The View From Your Front Porch.” The first entry is the view from his own porch. Here’s how…
Emmitsburg, Maryland …- You can tell it’s a small town when you know both of yesterday’s candidates for mayor, and when the mayor-elect’s margin of 33 votes constitutes a 20 percent victory in a contest that generated a pretty good
But are we or should we ever be emancipated from “the limitations of local circumstance”?
…is the title of a new multi-author volume edited by Joshua J. Yates and James Davison Hunter of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. I was one of the initial reviewers of the book,…
For those of you who were not able to be in Emmitsburg on Saturday, you missed a wonderful day. The rain stopped sometime in the night and the early morning sun burned away the low clouds. Well before 9am, people…
While I respect Robert George as one of America’s preeminent Catholic intellectuals, the gentleman nonetheless errs gravely in envisioning America as a “propositional nation.”
Actually, feel free to stay in your rocking chair, but if you plan to attend the conference on Saturday, please register here. This will make things much easier for the logistics people. Here is the schedule for the day. It’s…
Porch readers might be interested in J-Street, a non-profit organization dedicated to realizing an equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. J-Street identifies itself as representing “primarily but not exclusively Jewish” Americans who “support Israel and its desire for security as…
More reportage, now by Niall Ferguson, of the obviously depressing news – we are raising a nation of idiots.
Half of today’s teenagers don’t read books—except when they’re made to. According to the most recent survey by the National Endowment…
Get ready to fall off your seat. Sarah Palin, a.k.a., Flawed Vessel, recently received a bit of positive press in the New York Times. According to the Time’s Anand Giridharadas, Palin’s recent speech in Iowa seemed to show a willingness…
What a country!
All religious groups have their internecine squabbles and the places where such fights take place. They used to be confined to magazines and journals, and so only followed by the faithful who subscribed or who lived near a theological or…
Everything now portends the close of something desperately cherished.
As Epicurean as apple pie?
