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Articles Archive

The Computer Made Me Do It

The habit of questioning, of civil debate, of negotiating, and compromise are the habits necessary for a thriving democracy.
Mark T. Mitchell
July 11, 2011

Dare We Conform to Our Natures?

Mecosta, MI.  A FPR reader has written a fine essay dilating on a theme introduced in my own most recent piece (which was, in fact, largely a set of links…

Helpless?

With three children raised and fledged, we managed to avoid their seductive pox and the kids are actually grateful for it. All three of them are engaged in creative professions.…
July 8, 2011

If You Don’t Have A Life . . .

you happen to live in western Michigan, and don’t have any plans for this Saturday, you may be interested in coming to Grand Rapids to hear me give a talk…
July 8, 2011

Citizenship and Its Discontents

This lecture by Wilson Carey McWilliams was delivered at St. John's College in New Mexico on April 1, 1995. It is heretofore unpublished. While a number of its specific political…

Up with Summer, Down with Empire!

So say the signers (including four Front Porch-sitters) of this letter (www.comehomeamerica.us) from the nascent antiwar group Come Home, America. The permanent warfare state ill serves Americans; shall we give the…
July 5, 2011

SB 1070 and the Limits of Decentralism

Phoenix, AZ. In the days leading up to this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which will be held in Phoenix on July 12, there is sure to be a…
Jeremy Beer
July 5, 2011

Teaching Detachment

In this 2000 lecture, Wilson Carey McWilliams prophetically pointed to the deepening of existing trends in higher education toward detachment and mobility. He described his task in this lecture thusly…

Marriage Ends in New York, An Ancient Struggle Continues

Devon, PA. As my latest pair of essays on FPR scrolled across the screen, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was keeping the family legacy alive of undermining the obligations of…

Yo! Farmer Dude!

What farmer shortage? We're all farmers here at 1st and Main.
Katherine Dalton
June 30, 2011

FPR Conference on Sept. 24: Questions of Scale

Dear friends of FPR, Please join us at the inaugural Front Porch Republic conference on Saturday, September 24, at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Co-sponsored by the Mount…
Jeremy Beer
June 28, 2011

Social Justice, Rightly Understood

One of the most unexamined terms in regular use among left Catholics today is "social justice." Vague and often closely aligned with support for national government social programs, "social justice"…
Patrick Deneen
June 28, 2011

Biovillages

This article describes the effort of local villages in Germany to provide their own heat through local renewable resources. And, wonderfully, it stresses that the effort combines the twin achievements…
Patrick Deneen
June 27, 2011

Reconquista and the Gospel

Those who believe themselves above primitive nativist loyalty should take care, lest they be discovered worse than infidels for falling short of it.

Measuring the World Whole

Devon, PA.  Mark A. Signorelli's superb essay, "Poetry and the Common Language," appeared on FPR last month, and made to my mind a fine addition to helping us contemplate the…

George Orwell and Ideology

The following essay is by Wilson Carey McWilliams, and is drawn from one of the two new collections of his writings, The Democratic Soul. More information about McWilliams, his thought,…

Everyone Needs a Little Localism (or Leroy) in Their Lives

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS (This is, in many ways, connected to yesterday's post on Shannon Hayes's Radical Homemakers, but it also stands very much on its own.)…
June 23, 2011

Polyamorous manners

Miss Manners has weighed in on proper etiquette as regards persons in "polyamorous relationships." I am fascinated here by at least three things: 1) the reference to the polyamorous community;…
Jeff Polet
June 23, 2011

The Death of the Family

Devon, PA.  In my previous essay, a sort of preface, I mentioned a two-part essay I published in the wake of the 2008 presidential election, called "Sarah Palin, Spectacular Politics, and the…

Arguments about the Meaning of Family

Devon, PA.  Scott Yenor, Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University, has provided two dispassionate and informative articles on the historical function of the family and the means…

Sitting Inside a Mountain

Breaking free from the voices, soundtrack, machinery, and plastic of consumption and advertising gives an individual the opportunity to consider questions and ideas that the world outside St. Raymond’s continually…
June 20, 2011

Community, Storytelling, and Remembering

And I'm certain my bovine stare was a dead giveaway that I found it troubling to imagine him wearing anything but a felt fedora while riding a horse named Hobby.
June 16, 2011

We Should Be Together…

If you be in or around Washingtron on Sunday, June 19, join Dan McCarthy, Ralph Nader, Kelley Vlahos, Kevin Zeese, and Marc Steiner to discuss how patriots of left, right,…
June 14, 2011

Access to the Internet is a Human Right

Dumbing down of the concept of rights is not simply incoherent. It is pernicious.
Mark T. Mitchell
June 14, 2011