Articles Archive
The Mandalorian Makes a Surprising Defense of Tradition
Turns out, there are other Mandalorians, and our hero is a traditionalist. After this encounter, some speculated that Mando would go “the way of the creedless Unitarianians, steadily shedding his…
Rectifying the Names: Is Conservation Liberal?
To appeal to personal rights seems to be an appeal to the highest value, and it is no wonder that people are feeling spiritually and socially starved. No one in…
The Liberty to Value Common Goods: A Review of The Political Economy of Distributism
While some of Salter’s discussion here is “inside baseball” for economists, what he is trying to achieve is laudable, namely getting distributists to recognize some shortcomings in their theory while…
Dale Ahlquist on G.K. Chesterton
My guest is Dale Ahlquist who has made the study and promotion of the works and ideas of G.K. Chesterton his life’s work. We preview the upcoming Chesterton Society Conference,…
Apocalypse Now: ChatGTP and the End of Education
The intrusion of AI-generated content into the university sphere is a strange kind of judgement, even an old-style apocalypse, whose real gift is neither its productive power nor the opportunity…
Ambiguity and Belonging in Oklahoma
It is hard to say who this land belongs to, but I know without a doubt that I belonged to it from my earliest youth. I was raised just south…
Christopher Nolan: Anglo-American Apologist
Pattinson captured the appeal of Christopher Nolan’s movies: “You can either really, really dig into it, find so many different threads to pull, or you can appreciate it as a…
Invitations to Dwell
We soaked in the morning and our coffee, aware that we were technically trespassing. But, at the moment, we felt the weight of heritage, a complicated term that outmatched the…
Filling Time Filling Minds
That with which we fill our time, after all, is what ends up filling our minds, hearts, and souls. More than simply responsible scheduling, our very character is on the…
The Deep Spring: A Few Words in Favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This is the spirituality of a man post-tragedy, post-heroin, post-forty-days-in-the-wilderness. Not the self-pleased, spick-and-span, airbrushed piety we’ve come to expect from presidential candidates these days but practical spirituality.
Stepford, A Parable of Freedom
In Stepford, everyone has forgotten how to do nothing, as children used to do: the blessed nothing that is full of receptivity and calm, and that is at the heart…
Christians and the Classics
“Truth, wherever it is found, belongs to God.” This is true, then, when dealing with ancient writings of cultural value and significance. The truth and beauty found therein belong to…
Conservatism in a Liberal Regime
These essays unite history, philosophy, and social commentary to say something about the ebb and flow of ideas which shape post-modern accounts of who we are and where we came…
From Prison to Public School Mentoring
However, my role that day was not to frighten but inspire, as all the other mentors would do. My message was simple: I wanted these energetic students to know that…
Living the Dream: Unicorn Town
Once upon a time, different businesses and professions in a town would have their own baseball teams and play each other. At a minimum, we could do more to bring…
Do Not Go Gentle Into That AI Night
What starts as a method to optimize reading, exercise, or relationships becomes an end in itself. The native physiological benefit of the morning walk or bed-making is overshadowed by appeasing…
Fleeing the Ephemeral and Pursuing the Eternal: A Review of Love What Lasts
But if our souls are eternal, why do we not then spend more time with things that habituate us to eternity? If our days are short, and the “days are…
Jonathan Swift’s Street Cred
Swift knocked out several tracts and sermons on the problems of the Irish economy. And in them he said, in good FPR fashion, several FPRish things—for example, that place matters.
Reconciliation, History, and Localism
This will be the last Water Dipper for a few weeks. I’ll be taking some time off from email and the Internet. I plan to resume the Water Dipper in…
A Tribute to John McClaughry
When a top campaign staffer complained to Mr. Percy that John could be abrasive, John posted on the office bulletin board a brochure from an actual trade group, the National…
A Recipe for a Festival
They know their neighbors; and their neighbors, after all, are probably their kinsmen too, though it might take a careful genealogist to trace two neighboring streams back to their originating…
The Census Taker In the Church Pew, Part 2
At the time of this writing, W. and D., with W. staying at D.’s side, remain faithful attenders of our church’s worship services and Bible studies. How long will this…
The Ron Paul Effect
What I failed to realize was that the conservatism I was shifting away from was not a historical conservatism at all—rather, it was a distinctly 2000s neoconservatism that I had…
The Rust Belt, Ducks, and Lanternflies
“Barbara Kingsolver: ‘Rural people are so angry they want to blow up the system.’” Lisa Allardice talks with Barbara Kingsolver about her new novel: “Raised in Kentucky, Kingsolver describes herself…