Life Under Compulsion: From Schoolhouse to School Bus
“Imagine,” said my friend, “how long it takes the bus to go from Little Anse,” a village at the extreme end of the island...
Why the Christian Philosopher and Christian College Need Each Other
As Alasdair MacIntyre has shown, human knowledge is both “tradition-constituted” and “tradition-dependent,” as well as “tradition-transcendent.” And as he suggests in his latest book, God,...
Whither the Liberal Arts College? Or, Why Bloom’s Critique Doesn’t Matter
One sees signs of dètente in the academic wars that were highlighted by Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. At a more reflective...
Life Under Compulsion
In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist...
A Footloose Spring Day
On a gorgeous April Wednesday I am filling in as substitute homeschool teacher. We do arithmetic; we do a language lesson about adverbs and...
What Was High School For Anyway?
Twenty-five years ago today (I think; my memory is far from perfect) I graduated from Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley (then "Veradale"),...
Getting the Garden Going, One Baby-Step at a Time
This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through...
Childhood without a Harness
Just a few days back, I arrived home to find a mound of muddy clothes at my front entrance and the sounds of children...
Against Great Books
I make available, below, the text of a lecture I delivered in November, 2011, at University of Texas at Austin. My thanks to the...
Frat Boys and the Household
If you follow college "culture" at all, you'll find little new or surprising in the recent discussions of the abusive hazing rituals at Dartmouth,...