Articles Archive
Golf in the Modest Republic
Holland, MI. I’ve been fortunate enough to golf a number of courses that have been consistently ranked in “Top 100” lists, and recently I had an opportunity to play Crystal…
Road Rage
For readers tuning into the comments sections of FPR (where some of our best material lies), there was an extremely interesting and instructive discussion of the cost, and more generally…
The Right Way to Kick a Football
My father played for the Philadelphia Eagles. He didn’t particularly want to: In 1933, 1934, and 1935 the Eagles were a new “franchise” in the National Football League and not…
The Fear Monger’s Shop
One of the more interesting “advertisers” on A Prairie Home Companion is the “Fear-Monger's Shop,” catering to all your phobia needs. Garrison Keillor is of course satirizing what commercial advertisers…
Closing the Circle: An Economy of Values, and Where to Look for It
It is no surprise that many of us connected with FPR welcomed the release in mid July of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. As John Médaille and…
Making (a Virtue of) Vice
Yet more news from the hustings: a growing number of people are growing their own tobacco for their own consumption. Bully for them - depriving the beast of "sin taxes"…
Warren Oates, Constitutional Anarchist
From The American Conservative---you really should subscribe, you know---my piece (www.amconmag.com/article/2009/sep/01/00050/) on the great Kentucky actor Warren Oates.
Was Reagan Conservative?
If you listen to mainstream "conservatives" in America today, the poster-boy for the movement is, of course, Ronald Reagan. "We need a new Reagan revolution" they spout. "We need to…
Big Secrets
Claremont, CA. Yesterday I was walking past the post office in my latte-liberal, bohemian-bourgeois town, when I saw a picture of President Obama made up to look like Hitler.…
How Many Evangelicals Does it Take to Comment on an Encyclical?
68 apparently. I had to laugh when I saw this. I recognize many of them as my interlocutors from the old New Pantagruel days. And if I learned anything, it…
A Short History
Posted originally as a comment to Patrick Deneen's "Road Rage" (and re-posted here at his insistence): The State of Oregon Highway Comm. had a wonderful engineer named Conde McCullough who…
On Memories as a Starting Point: A Review of “Encounters” by Paul Gottfried
(An Eastern-European Reading). In a scene from a great movie called Transsiberian, a Russian traveler tells some innocent American tourists about the “Gulag” and the millions of people killed and…
Pomo’s vs. Fropo’s Revisited
I will admit that I did not keep up with all of the discussion that ensued from various blogs that tried to discern the differences between folks that write over…
Voices Against Progress: What I Learned from Genovese, Lasch, and Bradford
The following is excerpted from Paul Gottfried's Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers, recently published by ISI Books. I met Christopher Lasch for the first…
Without Borders, Ltd.
Kearneysville, WV. Question: what do these two books have in common? A Garfield the Cat book and My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands. Or what about these:…
Who Owns Our Jobs?
Irving, TX. We have all been trained up to the belief that jobs are something in the gift of great corporations or government bureaucracies. True, there are still places in…
Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca
Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time in the countryside. He observed that…
Philip Bess’s Pizza
Last week, Philip Bess - the noted Notre Dame University scholar of architecture - delivered a lecture in Washington under the auspice of the group "Conservatism on Tap." Bess's lecture…
Still’s “River of Earth”
Given domination of the Commonwealth’s institutions by progressivist ideology, it’s unsurprising how few Kentucky students and teachers are familiar with poet-novelist James Still and River of Earth (1940). After all,…
Can Health Care Be Local?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Over the past couple of weeks, I've written a few things on the current debate over health care reform. A couple of smart…
Who is Phillip Blond?
Here is an interview from The Guardian. Blond has the ear of David Cameron, calls himself a Red Tory, and is launching a new think tank in the fall. Do…
Advice For Up-And-Comers
Claremont, CA. I spoke last week at the New Jersey Governor’s School for Public Issues, a (mostly) state-funded summer program for civic-minded students about to enter their senior year in…
The Eccentricity of the Saints
Devon, PA. Earlier this week, some devout and worthy reader on the Porch proposed G.K. Chesterton as the patron saint of the Front Porch Republic. Aside from heartily endorsing the…
Hospitality and the Hopi: Fragmentation and Hope
“Pray for the foothills,/goatherds and windmills/and satellite dishes” – Mark Heard Cincinnati, OH. A comment on my recent post on Hopi hospitality referred to “…satellite dishes on the stone and…
