After months of preparation, the first annual conference is right around the corner.  If you haven’t registered yet, there is still time! The theme is “Human Scale and the Human Good: Creating Healthy Communities in a Global Age.”  The conference will be held on September 24 at Mount St. Mary’s Univeristy in Emmitsburg, MD.

We have a great line-up of speakers including Allan Carlson, Bill Kauffman, Rod Dreher, Patrick Deneen, Phillip Bess, Jason Peters, Caleb Stegall, David Cloutier, Christina Rosen, Josh Hochschild, John Schwenkler and Mark Mitchell.

There will be plenty of time for interaction with the speakers as together we discuss ways to strengthen our local communities.  This is a day you won’t want to miss.  Registration is $20 ($15 for students) or $25 at the door.  You can register online here, and see the conference schedule below.
 

A Joke from the Bar Jester

Two guys are sitting in a bar.  The first one says, “Did you know lions have sex ten to fifteen times a night?”

The second one says, “Really?  Damn!  I just joined the Rotary Club!”

~Jason Peters (with a hat tip to Bill Kauffman

Front Porch Conversations Online:

Aaron Carlson – The Family-Centered Economy: Overall, the key corrolations are clear: functional families are strong and large; strong and large families are function-rich.

Jason Peters – Against Vacation: The vacation, far from being a treatment for a serious illness, is instead a symptom of it.

James Matthew Wilson - Libertarian Solutions to Communal Difficulties: R.R. Reno writes on the First Things website this morning,

I’m no libertarian.

Joseph Baldacchino – Where Movement Conservatism Went Wrong – And How to Fix it: Freedom Requires Restraint

John Medaille – We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us: One has a free choice of whether to take one’s cocaine in crystal or powdered form. However, while this may be a free choice, it is never a choice of freedom, since either choice leads to slavery.

David J. Theroux – C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism: For decades, many Christians and non-Christians, both “conservative” and “liberal,” have unfortunately embraced an ill-conceived, “progressive” (i.e., authoritarian) vision to wield intrusive government powers

Peter Daniel Haworth – Democratic Discontent, Black Swans, Constitutional Conventions, and Civil or Foreign Wars: Could the United States radically change via another constitutional convention, experience a new civil war, split into multiple confederacies, and/or engage in a massive foreign war in order to preserve its cohesion?

Darryl Hart – You Say Dominion, I say Kingdom: Let’s call the whole world Christ’s. Ryan Lizza’s piece on Michele Bachmann prompted an avalanche of posts from bloggers and columnists who took issue with effort to link the Congresswoman from Minnesota to the political theology of Dominionism.

Ashley Trim- The Primary Error of Early English Education: During my brief foray into public education, I taught a group of seventh-graders a typical lesson from a standard middle-school literature textbook. . .

Front Porch Conversations face-to-faceTo connect for face-to-face conversations with readers near you visit our Porches page at the FPR website

If you would like to bring an FPR author to speak at your event, please visit our Speakers’ Guild page at the FPR Website

Our Future and Our Need

Will you invest in our mission by supporting us today? Giving is safe and easy through our website. And it’s entirely tax-deductible: Front Porch Republic, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) educational organization. Your donation will be used immediately to help us improve our site, recruit writers, and compensate (just a little) our hard-working technological and editorial assistants. It will also help us sponsor speakers and conferences across the country. Most importantly, your support of FPR is an investment in our vision: place, limits, liberty.

~ Board of Directors, Front Porch Republic

Questions? Feedback?  Contact Ashley Trim, editor of Front Porch Monthly at [email protected]