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Front Porch Republic

AI Data Centers, Exponential Growth, and the “J Curve” from Hell

AI may be perceived as an “immaterial” technology, but it totally depends on data centers that have intense physical demands.

Localists Abroad: A Conversation with Joel Carillet

Sometimes I’ll sit still for, say, an hour, and imagine all the people around the world who have embraced me, shook my hand, kissed my cheek.
June 3, 2026

What Hero Can Defeat the Hydra with a Thousand Faces?

The hydra we face is not only hard to defeat; it’s hard to define.

The Language of Drought and Duty

Sometimes, God does not simply give or withhold. Sometimes He rearranges who belongs where.

News, Notes, & Podcasts

Jeffrey Bilbro
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Jeffrey Bilbro
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A Farmer Reading His Paper. Photographed by George W. Ackerman, Coryell County, Texas, September 1931.

Groceries, Sin, and the Grail

Shawn Regan describes the manifold benefits the Great Salt Lake provides and the cross-partisan effort to replenish it.
June 6, 2026

I Only Want to Drown: Songs About the Ocean

We’re approaching the ocean from fourteen different directions on this week’s A Symposium of Popular Songs, featuring, for whatever reason, some very long songs (as well as a few short…
June 1, 2026
A Farmer Reading His Paper. Photographed by George W. Ackerman, Coryell County, Texas, September 1931.

Humanity, Stupidity, and Adversity

Peter Mommsen articulates the real good that small magazines can accomplish.
May 30, 2026

Centrifugal Motion: Songs About Kissing

We’re listening to songs about kissing this week. This is one of the perpetual themes of pop music, so I’m going to try to play only artists whom I’ve never…
May 25, 2026
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More Articles

The Dignity of Dependence: How the Vulnerabilities We Share Become the Ties that Bind

The loving entanglement that defies our culture’s idol of autonomy is available to men just as much as it is to women, though differently.

On Warren Farha, Cultural Renewal, and the (Too Few) Bookish Places Where They Happen

I cannot imagine a better metaphor for, and a better invitation to, the forming and renewing of cultural connections and communities than bookish places.

Where is Everybody? Lao Tzu’s Response to Fermi’s Paradox

What if our galactic neighbors have never come for a visit because they simply feel quite at home in their little corner of the universe?

Pat Buchanan, Subsidiarity, and the Fractured Religious Right

Buchanan’s fusion of Catholic subsidiarity and anti-globalism reveals the enduring fractures within the Religious Right that still shape today’s populist divides.

Sundays for the Young Son of a Theologically Conservative Pastor

My father was the pastor, and he was not above reprimanding his children from the pulpit if we didn’t sit very quietly.

Healthy Birds Leave the Nest

We didn’t raise our children to keep them for ourselves. We raised them to go make a home, to share grace and love.

Is There Room for Enmity in the A.I. Classroom?

By heightening emotion, hatred deepens the personhood of both teachers and students.

The Hardware Store

The hardware store’s customers aren’t just customers. They aren’t just numbers on a spreadsheet. They are its neighbors.

Dessert with Darlene: The Hospitality of Widows and the Making of Membership

Throughout the epistles, the apostles in both word and deed prioritize the care of widows and summarize it as "true religion."

Trump and the Furies of Empire

Trump, in his crude way, is forcing us to confront the false stories we have told ourselves about who we are.

The Prospect of a Meat-Free Future

There are problems that we do not have the luxury of waiting for lab-grown burgers to solve.

A Day (Un)Like Any Other Day

And then I noticed that she had a Children’s Hospital visitor sticker on her sweater and that, hardly before I finished my admonishment, she began to sob.

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…
February 25, 2022

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,…
June 15, 2020

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…
August 19, 2019

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…
July 23, 2018