Articles Archive
This Saturday at Georgetown
Purcellville, VA. Readers in the Washington, D.C. area are invited to attend "What is Social Justice?" at Georgetown University this Saturday, April 6th. This conference is sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute…
Eating Local–Or Local Enough
If I earn ten pennies in heaven for being a local food supplier, do I get five for being regional?
How to Lose a Republic
Long before our own time, the customs of our ancestors moulded admirable men, and in turn these eminent men upheld the ways and institutions of their forebears. Our age, however,…
…And Marry Young.
Mark Mitchell has recently posted about marrying young. This becomes a topic of conversation, of course, when no one is doing it. I find in my conversations with students that…
Time To Stop Hooking Up
Donna Freitas writes in The Washington Post about the sorrows, travails, and confusions of the hook-up culture (if it can be called such). I am reminded when reading her article…
Second-Hand Sex
Hillsdale, Michigan. Perhaps it is a function of having been reared by two alums of Bob Jones University -- where, let's be clear, I did NOT go -- but I…
Biometric ID Cards Coming Your Way (Maybe)
Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham are pushing for national biometric ID cards as part of their comprehensive immigration reform plan. Writing an opinion piece in The Washington Post, the senators…
Whither the Public Library?
Despite constant speculation about public libraries’ “relevan[ce] in the digital age,” and serious budget cuts caused by the recent recession, the American public library is not in crisis. Local governments…
Neighbor Day
A friend sent this link announcing "NeighborDay." Here's a description: It’s crazy how few of us know our neighbors: their names, their phone numbers, what they’re about. The explosion of…
Piers Sits Ryan in the Corner
Ryan Anderson may be the most courageous person in America. Who would willingly place himself in the company of Piers Morgan and Suze Orman for the sole purpose of being…
Ayn Rand Called C.S. Lewis an “Abysmal Bastard”
First Things has a piece on Ayn Rand's marginalia in her copy of The Abolition of Man. Ayn Rand was no fan of C.S. Lewis. She called the famous apologist an…
At only $8000, A Real Bargain
If this isn't the height of decadence I don't know what is: Putting aside those with fibromyalgia, how could anyone justify this purchase? Is it free "white glove" installation? Are…
Fragility and Scale
There is an interesting interview over at Reason with Nassim Taleb, author of Black Swan, a book which presciently described the economic disorder preceding the financial collapse. I haven't read the book,…
The Case for Getting Married Young
Hidden Springs Lane. A couple months before my wife and I were married, a friend ask me "why do you want to get married so young?" My fiance and I…
Solidarity Hall Asks Some Questions of George Weigel
Solidarity Hall is a website interested in formulating new visions for civil society. Their initial project is an attempt to recover communitarian ideas from thinkers like G.K. Chesterton, Jane Jacobs,…
Democracy Is A Racket
War and Democracy by Paul Gottfried Arktos Media Ltd 170 pp., $21.00 In this slender volume Paul Gottfried addresses everything from the influence of ancient Greek thought on Oswald…
See You at the Movies…
Herewith the spanking-new trailer for Copperhead, which Ron Maxwell (Gettysburg) directed and yrs truly scripted from a novella by the great novelist of Upstate New York--no, not J.F. Cooper but…
In Defense of President Obama’s Syria Policy
Myriad calls have been made for intervention in Syria. President Obama has been blamed with everything from “feeble paralysis most foul” to subcontracting “foreign policy to the likes of Qatar”…
Deleting the Individual: Big Data and Presidential Campaigns
The following is an excerpt from David Masciotra's new book, Against Traffic: Essays on Politics and Identity. For sale exclusively at Amazon. Looking back over the 2012 Presidential Election, it…
Going Home Again? Not Likely.
If I am correct, it seems there is a certain kind of arch-typical narrative that has become quite popular here at FPR, and in some sense, emblematic of its defense…
Men of the World, Pick Up Your Brooms
Alexandra Bradner, a philosophy professor at the University of Kentucky, has a piece at The Atlantic on women's "second shifts." Noting that women, mothers in particular, are both "important" and "exploited,"…
The Mouse with Tusks: Speech, Power, Perversity
Earlier this week, Terry Gross interviewed Emily Anthes, author of Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts, on recent development in bioengineering, including radio controlled insects, pigs which…
Farming without Dirt (and with fish)
Here is an article describing a method of producing vegetation and fish in a symbiotic relationship all without dirt. Could this, as the title of the article suggests, revolutionize the…