Articles Archive
There’s Equality, and There’s Equality
In one of my favorite movies, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, a family of coal miners is faced with the prospect of lower wages handed out by the…
McClaughry Memoir: The Thousand Points of Light
The following is the final installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen. See the previous chapter here. 8. George H.W. Bush and the Thousand Points of Light Inheriting…
Localist Roundup: Horse-Drawn Carriages and Portable Churches
This article reports on the continuing saga of legal challenges to NSA data collection. In other court news, as the Affordable Care Act goes into effect, Justice Sotomayor has issued…
A Wish for the New Year
"On New Year's Eve, at about quarter to twelve o'clock at night, the master of the house and all that are with him go about from room to room opening…
Localist Roundup: Walmarts of Higher Education
Happy New Year! Tomorrow, the Affordable Care Act takes full effect. In other news, this piece looks at Census Bureau statistics and analyzes population shift in the States. The article…
Real Presences
Hidden Springs Lane. What’s the deal with Smart Phones? Go to any public gathering and most of the young people (and some of the not-so-young) are clearly more interested in…
Localist Roundup: Farms and Fishermen
Merry Christmas! Last week, the FDA issued a message concerning the new food safety regulations. Meanwhile, this piece speculates about the fate of specialty crops under a new farm bill.…
Possessive Individualism: Can We Really Own Ourselves?
The bedrock principle of all Liberalism, whether of the Right or the Left, is Locke’s assertion that “every man has a Property in his own Person.” If is from this…
What We Wish at Christmas
In practicing the rites of worship men hope that they will be vouchsafed a share in the superhuman abundance of life. From time immemorial, this very thing has always been…
McClaughry Memoir: The Reagan Years
The following is the fourth installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen. See the previous chapter here. 7. Ronald Reagan Now let’s backtrack to 1966 and follow…
Please Consider Giving to FPR
Dear readers, For nearly five years, thousands of you have been kind enough, bored enough, or crazy enough to make Front Porch Republic part of your regular web reading. We’ve…
If On A Northeastern Ohio Winter’s Night a Traveler…
The good folks at Mackinaw Valley Institute ponder the passage of time and the provisioning of shelter, as people travel from place to place, needing to find a home in…
Localist Roundup: Suburban Farms?
Late last week, Pope Francis gave an interview. Among other things, the Pope defended himself from the charge of being a Marxist. In other news, Target confirmed this morning that…
Belloc on Christmas
How we observe Christmas has a real urgency; at issue is our happiness, and even our sanity. So Belloc argues in A Remaining Christmas. I reflect on his profound essay at Aleteia, Why Christmas…
Localist Roundup: Deals and Decisions
This week's news is mostly on the political front. A budget deal seems ready to go through the Senate, wrapping up the congressional conflict from earlier this year. But another…
What You Need to Know about Dana Gioia
Dana Gioia has spent his career making metaphors: drawing disparate things together to reveal the breadth and depth of aesthetic experience, but doing so in a way that has frequently…
Has This Guy Never Heard of Downton Abbey?
Hillsdale, Mich. Jack Rakove reviews Yuval Levin's The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (finder's fee to John Fea) and can't figure out…
A Semester of Teaching Sustainability
[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res] The semester has come to an end here at Friends University, and students are leaving campus for their holiday break. Right now I'm grading, and…
Waiting for Benedict
Those long haunted by Alasdair MacIntyre's plea at the end of After Virtue - for that matter, even those who aren't - may wish to read Rod Dreher's piece on "The Benedict…
The Gates of Hell
Jeremy Beer gave a brilliant presentation at the FPR Conference on the problems associated with The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or "big philanthropy" in general. Over at Mother Jones is…
Teaching Responsibility
Ischomachus’ wife: “My mother told me that my job was to be responsible.” Ischomachus: “Yes, my dear, of course, my father gave me the same advice.” Xenophon, The Estate Manager,…
Visit Michigan
Do Porchers travel? Well, if they do, they can hardly do better than to come to West Michigan - God's country if ever there was one. So says The Lonely…
Of Vision and Discipline
After six years absence, I have just published a review essay in the great Contemporary Poetry Review, one of the first important internet critical journals. The review is of two new…