The Importance of Growing Up Village
Cold Spring, NY. Leopold Kohr, the author of the great classic, The Breakdown of Nations, once said that his approach to the world--in favor...
Another Bad Idea In American Public Schooling
Claremont, CA. Outside of Los Angeles County, few people have heard about the latest dangerous idea in public education.
Two local public school districts have...
Root Hog or Die
Henry County, Kentucky. Every Memorial Day my husband takes our children to visit three cemeteries in our county. We take grass from the family farm...
Stormin’ Norman, Decentralist
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--One of the precious and few political campaigns in recent years to embody Front Porch (or, rather, front stoop) principles was Norman...
Commencement Address
Take heart
though, for most of your triumphs, large and small, lie in front of you as well. Which is
just to say that you stand at a grand beginning, the cusp of possibility.
Meritocracy, Urban Design, and Culture: Observations from a Friend
PHOENIX, ARIZONA. (Note: this post has two pages, thanks to webmaster Lundy's new-and-improved FPR technology.) I am gratified by the many responses, here and...
What Is to be Done?
On Amtrak Regional Train 130 Daniel Larison has written a number of related postings here (and here) and elsewhere that have insistently raised and...
Good Job, Bruce!
A retirement dinner party for an Ivy League professor follows certain conventions. It begins with the cocktail hour where guests renew old and make new...
Localism And Cosmopolites
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
Remarking on Jeremy Beer's article on meritocracy, Patrick Deneen concludes with this grim, but correct, observation:
This, in a microcosm, is a central paradox...
The Great Recession and the Rebirth of Community
An article in last week's Washington Post explores the revival of communities as a response to the economic crisis. According to the article,
As...