Articles Archive
Watching Walker Percy
The author of The Moviegoer would make a fascinating subject for a movie, or at least a documentary. So reasoned filmmaker Win Riley. His Walker Percy: A Documentary Film, which…
Symposium on Place and FPR’s Role in the “New Right.”
The spring issue of The New Atlantis features a symposium on place. Check it out. Of special interest is a piece by Brian Brown titled "The Rise of Localist Politics."…
Rocky and the New Populism
Today we can easily forget how dark things looked in the 1970s and how much people feared that they might be living in the sunset years of our nation and…
What Are Buildings For?
James Kalb has recently interviewed mathematician and architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros. As someone who has always been irritated when people mistakenly think it the job of "science" to invent more…
Rod’s Back
Dreher, that is, with a new blog at The American Conservative website. Congratulations to both, and especially all of us, who have missed his voice over the past year. We'll…
Paradise at Ground Zero
What I’m not expecting to hear is anyone asking how it was that about 25,000 people in the towers aided each other in an orderly evacuation, without which the casualty…
The Dangers of Professional Philanthropy
Maybe you are the kind of donor who supports nonprofits in your community. Like many Americans, you give or tithe through your church or temple. You support local human-service organizations…
Red Tory?
Red toryism claims to be re-defining the political landscape, moving beyond the old hegemonic debates as to whether the best kind of government is socialist and statist or liberal and…
The Primary Error of Early English Education
During my brief foray into public education, I taught a group of seventh-graders a typical lesson from a standard middle school literature textbook: we read a chapter from Ramsey Ullman’s…
Interstate Commerce and Arizona Wine
The federal courts' extraordinarily broad interpretation of the Constitution's interstate commerce clause has long posed a problem for localists -- which is to say, for community self-governance. That has never…
The Cynic by the Bay
From today's Wall Street Journal, my review of the Library of America's Ambrose Bierce omnibus:
You Say Dominion, I Say Kingdom . . .
Let’s call the whole world Christ’s. Ryan Lizza’s piece on Michele Bachmann prompted an avalanche of posts from bloggers and columnists who took issue with effort to link the Congresswoman…
FPR Conference Program
You won't want to miss this. Register here. Session 1: Mobility and the Crisis of Community Patrick Deneen: The Liberal Self and Mobility Allan Carlson: Why the Modern Family Keeps…
A Human Education
From Pope Benedict XVI's Address to Young University Professors: "Where will young people encounter those reference points in a society which is increasingly confused and unstable? At times one has…
The Right to Lie
If you must lie, measure it against your own self-interest and make sure it is legal, and if at all possible try not to do it under oath.
$6,500 Goes a Long Way
McDowell County in North Carolina suffered an unemployment rate of 14.8% in 2009 (over 4% higher than the national rate). At a loss with what to do with the increasing…
Citizenship, Localism, and Catholicism
Devon, PA. For months now, I have been sitting on an incomplete draft of a series of essays on "Localism and the Universal Church," wherein I seek to show that…
Fair and Balanced?
Say what you will about Ron Paul, Fox News' failure to say anything about the candidate is curious and gives Jon Stewart a big target. The Daily Show - Indecision…
Easter and Economics
Robert T. Miller and I discuss two opposed views of Catholic Social Teaching as it relates to economics in this month's issue of Dappled Things. Robert defends that "... for…
Pure Michigan
"Good Morning America" has named Sleeping Bear Dunes, along the Lake Michigan shore, its "most beautiful place" in America. I can think of at least two other Porchers who could…
C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism Pt. III
This is Part II of a III Part series on C.S. Lewis and Statism. The series originally appeared at theIndependent Institute. See Part I here and Part II here. Collectivism and…
New Review of the Coen Brothers’ True Grit
Many readers will be interested in a highly critical review of the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit that has just been published in ANAMNESIS. The review is entitled, "Rooster…
C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism Pt II
This is Part II of a III Part series on C.S. Lewis and Statism. The series originally appeared at theIndependent Institute. See Part I here and Part III here. Moral…
C.S. Lewis on Mere Liberty and the Evils of Statism
This is Part I of a III Part series on C.S. Lewis and Statism. The series originally appeared at the Independent Institute. See part II here and part III here.…