Place. Limits. Liberty.
Join us for FPR’s 2025 Conference on “Work and Leisure”

Articles Archive

Iowa… Place of the Drowsy Ones

OWEN TOWNSHIP, WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILLINOIS: According to one legend, the word Iowa means "Place of the Drowsy Ones" in some extinct Indian tongue. This came to mind yesterday when the…
April 4, 2009

No Going Back…So Where Are We Going?

The idealism of the paleoconservative cause is simply too burdened by the idealism of its vision. Politics is not a time machine and we are not ever going to travel…
April 4, 2009

Crunchy Pope, Part Two: Against Gnostic Economics

The obscuring of the faith in creation is a fundamental part of what constitutes modernity. As I survey all the perplexing shifts in the spiritual landscape of today, only these…

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without

Wichita, Kansas. I have a blogging (and occasional real world, actual face-to-face) friend by the name of Laura McKenna. She is funny, smart, occasionally profane, often wise, and very much…
April 3, 2009

I Did Taste!

Under consideration: Michael Pollan, The Omnivor's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Penguin (2006), 464 pages; and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Penguin (2008), 256 pages.* JEFFERSON…
April 2, 2009

Sex, Technocrats, and Technobrats

Devon, PA.  During the last few weeks, Patrick Deneen's posts on Front Porch Republic have drawn our attention to the near identity of the deadly vices of greed and lust. …

Local Currencies Strengthen Local Communities

USA Today has a piece on local currencies here. Excerpt: "A small but growing number of cash-strapped communities are printing their own money. "Borrowing from a Depression-era idea, they are…
Mark T. Mitchell
April 2, 2009

An Elegy for Tobacco

Henry County, Kentucky. What holds a community together?  Or rather, what holds my community together, as I'll have to leave you to worry about yours?  I think about it some because…
Katherine Dalton
April 2, 2009

Entropy Made Visible

Since Stewart posted a terrific video about the death of bee colonies from "TED," I thought I'd post my own favorite from that site - a devastating and hilarious jeremiad…
Patrick Deneen
April 1, 2009

The Places of Teen Pop Culture

It's not only that the richest people are getting richer; it's the richest places, too. And even within regions -- southern California, say -- rich suburbs have become wealthier and…

One Lawyer, No Money, Plenty of Guns

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--Now that Russell has smuggled firearms onto the porch I suppose it's only a matter of time before the BATF calls it a "compound." Until then, herewith, via…
April 1, 2009

Baseball Symposium

John Miller asked me to write on why I love the Diamondbacks. Twenty-nine others pitch in on the rest of the league, if you're interested, including my friends Darryl Hart…
Jeremy Beer
April 1, 2009

Tocqueville’s Diagnosis

RINGOES, NJ As brilliant minds, armed with apparently endless supplies of money, thrash about Washington desperately attempting to fix what they have broken, it might be useful to step back…
Mark T. Mitchell
March 31, 2009

Another Irrelevant Conversion

Many folks--including Rod and the guys at Plumb Lines, just to cite two from our own blogroll--have taken notice of Newt Gingrich's impending conversion to Catholicism. For several months, I've…
Jeremy Beer
March 30, 2009

Oiko-Systems

Alexandria, VA. For many years now, "environmentalists" have sought to thwart the extension of forms of commerce and economic development that prove destructive of "eco-systems" or threaten the delicate balance…
Patrick Deneen
March 30, 2009

Crunchy Pope, Part 1: Body, Earth and Cosmos

Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Pope Benedict has recently gained a bit of credit with world media for emphasizing the urgency of addressing the environmental devastation we have wrought. This (combined with…

The Populist Farmer, Revisited

Via John Schwenkler, I see that Norman Borlaug has just celebrated his 95th birthday. Borlaug, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is one of the primary architects of modern…
March 27, 2009

Reasoning about Stories

  Devon, PA. Here is something for you that no one will dispute: all complaints about modernity, including those that fit under the rubric of "conservative," are arguments about stories. …

The Right to Bear an Extraordinary Knowledge Base

Now that I am a tiny cog in the great machinary of state, I get all kinds of insider mailings.  This in today, from the American Board for Certification in…
March 26, 2009

Responding to RAF

Russell wrote:  This is, perhaps, why Caleb Stegall and those like him are, to me anyway, the most important-if not necessarily the most persuasive-of all the localists and agrarians out…
March 26, 2009

Against Monoculture

In plant or animal life, a single virus or bacteria, a single destructive fungus or disease, a single hostile predator or pest would wipe out an entire monoculture without the…
Patrick Deneen
March 26, 2009

You Say Liturgy, I Say Lechery

I hurried up to Columbia University to inform my friends on the campus that I had located the Communist Party, had made contact with it, and was, in fact, a registered…
March 25, 2009

Interview with Me

Thanks to Mr. BC, of Burke's Corner, for his recent visit to Georgetown and for the conversation we enjoyed.  He's recorded some of his impressions here.  All that was missing…
Patrick Deneen
March 25, 2009