Articles Archive
Why the Christian Philosopher and Christian College Need Each Other
As Alasdair MacIntyre has shown, human knowledge is both “tradition-constituted” and “tradition-dependent,” as well as “tradition-transcendent.” And as he suggests in his latest book, God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of…
Whither the Liberal Arts College? Or, Why Bloom’s Critique Doesn’t Matter
One sees signs of dètente in the academic wars that were highlighted by Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. At a more reflective level this can be seen in…
Peer Lending and the Problem of Credit
This article is reprinted with permission from The Philanthropic Enterprise and its Trends in Social Innovation project. Eleven years ago, Bruno Rivas left Mexico City to make a better living…
The Passing of Two Great Intellectual Historians
News of the passing of Gene Genovese and Henry May took the wind out of these aging sails. In addition to reading these historians while in grad school almost thirty…
Lessons on Limits from the Cougar Prophet
If a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, I took my prescription of limits and localism with a spoon full of pretty sweet sugar indeed. About 20…
Intellectual Historians on Intellectual Conservatism
Seth Bartee over at the U.S. Intellectual History blog has a piece on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute which includes a reference or two to FroPo conservatives: Essentially neo-conservatives successfully homogenized…
Boycotting Boycotts
David Walbert explains how to avoid hypocrisy. Last week, walking across campus to the library, I was interrupted (I don’t want to say “accosted”) by a woman in her early…
Debt-Free Farming
Over at The American Conservative website, Glenn Arbery writes of a farmer who seeks to remain as independent and self-sufficient as possible. But it has not been easy. Nevertheless, These…
Thoughts on Statesmanship in a Season of Dearth
One may notice in this election cycle a certain amount of talk about statesmanship – primarily because each of the candidates is thought to lack it. The latest issue of…
Tocqueville and Beyond
In a recent interview Chilton Williamson talks about his new book After Tocqueville, described by former FPR contributor John Willson as “the best book on democracy in the past hundred years.”…
Leaving Washington
Notre Dame, IN. It was on the virtual “pages” of the Front Porch Republic that I announced last February that I was leaving Georgetown University, in Washington D.C., to accept a…
Life Under Compulsion
In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist Sigrid Undset fled to the countryside…
A Goodman is Hard to Find
I’m happy to report that New York Review Books has just reprinted Growing Up Absurd (1960), Paul Goodman’s classic plea for the human scale against the postwar corporate and military-industrial…
The Dangerous Alliance of Big Government and Big Business
The most important political conversation Americans need to have is about how the old conversations no longer matter. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party—called the one-and-a-half party system by…
Historian on the Debate
The blogosphere is filled with opinions on last night's debate between the president and the challenger. The chattering classes has gotten a whole lot larger. Unless you are a historian…
Take Me Home
This excerpt is taken from Eric Miller's new book: Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings. The Penn State University geographer Wilbur Zelinsky believes something exists called the “Pennsylvania Culture…
Political Hope, Spiritual Longing
The following is an excerpt from a new book by Eric Miller: Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings. Of all the distinctive raiment with which Americans garb themselves,…
Christopher Lasch on Presidental Debates
As the first of the presidential debates approaches, it is helpful (though not necessarily heartening) to turn to Christopher Lasch, whose understanding of American democracy was profound. The following paragraphs…
The Banks we Deserve, the Economy we can Sustain
If you didn't catch this panel put on by Marketplace and BBC, it's pretty exciting. It takes the expert panel only about 10 minutes (2:00 to 12:40) to get to…
Hospitality at a Fractured Table
“It sure is hard to have people over to dinner these days,” the food writer lamented, at a talk I attended the other week. She told a sorry tale of…
Crazy Quilt Conservatism
Hidden Springs, VA.Last week the Washington Post ran a story titled “Rethinking the Classroom: Obama’s Overhaul of Public Education.” The piece described the various ways Obama has asserted himself into…
How to be a Localist Anywhere
Maybe your neighborhood doesn’t have front porches or sidewalks or a farmer’s market or anywhere to shop except Target. Maybe despite the supposed modern hegemony of freedom and mobility, you…
Twice Removed
Damn the lights, unnatural, bright, coiled, spewing white 15 watts. Damn the halls, with their smooth vinyl, soaked in bleach, the stench of sterile rising like road kill on…