Front Porch Republic
Food Against AI: On Letting Go, and Holding On, and Being Human
Make sourdough: as an act of love for your body and your friends and family, and as a remedy against the ills of non-embodied life.
The Voice of Communities in the Conversation of Mankind
What might be gained by viewing Nisbet’s different forms of community as being in a conversation, rather than in a competition?
The Perils of Writing in an Age of Distraction
My real fear is not so much that the Internet makes us bad readers, but that it makes us bad writers.
Against AI Slop. For Feelable Thought
What will it take to sustain the remnants of a contemporary republic of letters on the margins of a public square blasted by machine-speak?
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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Keeps Me Up at Night with the Memory: Songs About Nostalgia
We’re looking back with a golden haze this week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, listening to songs about nostalgia (and its high-class cousin, antiquarian feeling). Send your song suggestions…
Techn-Kings, Micro-Colleges, and Groupthink
If you think an algorithmic function can have a moral character, I’m not sure you’ll have a productive conversation about aligning AI with human goods.
When You Win, Everyone Wants In: Songs About Success
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening to songs about success—its joys, its sorrows, and its dangers. Send your song recommendations to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com!
Chesterton, Lukacs, and Joe
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn expresses gratitude for Wendell Berry’s latest novel and his faithful voice speaking truth over many decades.
More Articles
Perhaps the Nails Run the Other Way: A Review of The Body of this Death
Hope remains, and it is the hope of the incarnation, which the Archbishop describes as the “technology of Catholicism.”
Why We Abandon Books
Maybe my reading taste buds are dull. Maybe I’m in a lazy slump. Do I need more books? More appealing choices? Am I even asking the right question?
Prophetic Possibilities: A Few Words on David W. Orr and a Healing Vision for America
A healing vision for America, Orr suggests in his writings, is one faithful to the great nearby, to the gospel of the local.
Can Driftwood Determine?
Maybe we ought to use our being and thinking not to decide what our lives should be “for” or “against,” but rather what we would like our lives to define.
The Age of AI Parenting
Altman, while acknowledging that people can and have parented before AI, stated that he cannot imagine parenting without it.
Old Fred’s Night Music
What is the ideal that we sometimes glimpse within the world and which thus inspires our own attempts at order-making, at meaning-making?
Why Cormac McCarthy Stands Alone Among Novelists
McCarthy, a little before the rest of us, had caught a glimpse of Western Civilization’s end.
The Exemption Option: AI and Believers
Emerging tools have to justify themselves to us more than we have to justify ourselves to emerging tools.
Speculators versus Farmers: A Review of The Land Trap
Land is only going to become more expensive and thus ever more unaffordable and inaccessible for the agrarians of the future.
The Weighty News of the World
The 1890s gave rise to the journalistic trope, if it bleeds, it leads. And news has never been the same since.
We Are Not Enemies: What an Iranian Film Reveals About Vengeance and Civility
However strained, the bonds of affection must not be broken.
From the Archive
From the Editor–Local Culture 4.1: The Civil Dissent Issue
Think not, then, of the ubiquitous screens and hideous architecture and suburban metastasis and microwave dinners. Think rather of Eric Voegelin’s famous quip—Voegelin, who said that “no one is obliged…
Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get…
Tanya Berry’s Faithful Art
Women like Tanya bring artistry and honor to everything they touch: the homes they inhabit, the land they steward, the children they raise. These photographs are testimony to the clear,…
Can There be a National Conservatism?
Here’s the irony: a growing number of conservatives realize that it will require the assistance of the State to correct many of the problems that have been created by the…
Cheese Should Be Dangerous
The cheese crafted here came about as a byproduct of a larger whole, the natural dividend of a complete way of life, and this is the foundation of the best…