Lift a Glass to Mark Mitchell

More than 13 years ago Mark T. Mitchell did me a solid, as I believe the cool people like to say. Or maybe they don’t anymore. Inasmuch as I’m old enough to hear a scatological joke in that phrase, it’s possible that on this day, December 15, year of Our Lord 2025, the Idiom Train has once again left the station without me.

What Mark did for me was publish a piece in these “pages” titled “Thanks to Jason Peters, aka The Bar Jester.” In it he acknowledged my many “contributions” to FPR. Or maybe it was my one contribution to FPR. That one contribution was to produce a piece every week (sometimes a near duplicate of another) over the course of almost four years for this young website. I did this for two reasons: One is that at the launch of FPR in March of 2009 several of us agreed to write weekly essays to ensure that FPR would always have new material up every day. This, we hoped, would keep the site meter spinning.

So in accordance with my vow I did yeoman’s work for each Wednesday, my day, the Bar Jester’s day, to the tune of about 155 “essays.” I once wrote a piece above the Atlantic just to keep the streak alive. My wife and kids knew to leave me alone on Tuesday nights. I was sort of like a drunk uncle cleaning his gun: everyone knew to stay clear of the trailer park.

The second reason is that after a very short time the other promissories had fallen away. The hens quit laying. But I decided, by God, to keep on producing—doing a solid, you might say—just to shame them for wimping out. I did this until I came up for another sabbatical and felt obliged to spend my time fulfilling my promise to the college that was paying me not to teach—sort of like all those universities (LSU and Michigan State come to mind) that are currently paying former coaches not to lose any more football games. (The discrepancy in dollar amounts, I acknowledge, somewhat compromises the illusion of similitude here.) That’s when my streak of weekly contributions came to an end and Mark posted his kind words of thanks.

And now it is my honor to return the favor to my friend—to our friend—Mark Mitchell.

For a few months shy of 16 years Mark has served as FPR’s president. He was at the headwaters of it all. For the most part FPR is his brainchild. (Jeremy Beer was also in on it, as was Patrick Deneen back when he was patrick deneen.) Mark tells the story in his preface to Localism in the Mass Age: A Front Porch Republic Manifesto, which he co-edited. Make sure you have a well-thumbed copy on one of your bookshelves.

But now Mark is stepping down.

Did you know that he was also FPR’s treasurer before we had anything like a board (or money) and, what is more, that he was the first editor of the website? Jeff Polet, our current treasurer, took over the website from Mark before handing it over to Jeff Bilbro. These three Philanthropists of the Virtual can tell you how time-consuming a job it is to read and edit passable or even good essays, not to mention what unpleasant work it is to read and reject bad ones. And then there’s the tedious business of getting everything up on the site. I have to leave my remarks at that. I don’t have a particular enough language or even a general enough knowledge to comment on running a website. It looks to me like damned desultory work. I have enjoyed 16 years of not doing it.

Mark gets the credit for the conferences we hold every year. It was his idea that we organize an annual conference. He convened the first one in 2011 at Mount St. Mary’s University, which was way more successful than a first conference had any right to be.

Mark’s preface to Localism in the Mass Age is sharp and smart and to-the-point. It’s as good an introduction to localism and to the problems that localism faces as you’re likely to read anywhere. Even I consulted it recently, and I usually just make things up.

During this time Mark also wrote a book for the FPR imprint.

Over the years many of FPR’s worst reprobates have tried to corrupt him, but he has kept himself undefiled. He has taken more than one man’s share of ribbing for having only one beer at a sitting and leaving it at that. He’s admitted to not liking the taste of mint juleps. Who does that? Who but a man of Abdiel’s moral fortitude?

During this time he organized several Liberty Fund conferences, one in New Orleans, where he watched several of his friends drink mint juleps.

He survived a fly-fishing expedition with me. I put us in the river at the wrong spot. Six hours later we had finally waded downstream, in the dark, to the landing where I had intended to put us in. We enjoyed a steak dinner at my fishing shack later that night, we two plus Jeff Polet, who had to forgo the fishing in order to write yet another essay of inexpressible tedium that no one would ever read. At dinner Mark relished his one beer.

I exaggerate. It was half a beer.

Like others of us he also raised children and other farm animals: hens, meat birds, and steers. (I for my part settled on four kinds of livestock, three of which you can count on to befoul their own dwellings: hens, lambs, and teenaged sons. Hogs are so much neater.)

And of course Mark wrote for the website, helped with a subversive group in his area (they are called “homeschoolers”), and taught political science at Patrick Henry College, where he also serves as the Dean of Academic Affairs, a job that is not as salacious as it sounds.

In 16 years he’s done a lot. Now he’s going to do one less thing. He deserves the work-load reduction. It could also be that he’s getting older, unlike the one who pays him this tribute.

Leave a comment to thank Mark. Add your good wishes to mine. He deserves them.

Fare thee well, Mark. Thanks for your vision, good work, and faithfulness. Now don’t be a stranger.

Judith Leyster, “The Jolly Drinker,” 1629, Rijksmuseum.