Articles Archive
The Foothills of the Ozarks
Unlike many I grew up with, I’m proud to be an Oklahoman. I’m proud to have a family heritage that is tied to a place and has roots in a…
Things I Learned in Intermediate Greek Class
Reading ancient languages requires slow and careful thinking and processing of a sort that we do not normally utilize in our pressure-cooker fast-consumer world.
Localism, Liberalism, and Regionalism
“Fidelity to Place.” James Matthew Wilson speaks on behalf of honoring our unchosen bonds: “What is missing from modern life is fidelity—and not just fidelity in general, but fidelity to…
Ecological Curiosity for Faithful Feeling of Place: Mountain Nature and Strangers in High Places
So too does my eye for the Creator veiled and present in His evidence. Without them, how could I recognize what was first and larger in what I sense of…
What’s the Beef with Cows?
Cows do not kill people; people kill people. Especially people who claim cows are the problem. Cows are key players in solving the problems created by industrial agriculture.
Is Regime Change too Radical? Or too Conservative?
What is more radical, and more conservative, than to cast the ring into the fire? That would be a real “regime change,” would it not?
Putting the Demos on a Pedestal
Why Liberalism Failed was a good book, but Regime Change is a better one, and I think will be recognized as such—as well as one that will gain notoriety in…
Whither Brexit?
Debates over the fate of the nation-state are largely driven by the fundamental problem of how we respond to guilt in a post-Christian age. Our politics will thus reflect the…
Money, the Wild, and the Metaverse
“Living as Humans in a Machine Age.” Registration is now open for our fall conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Paul Kingsnorth will be the keynote speaker, and we’ll post the full…
Spider-Man Has Lost His Place
Spider-Man now devalues human-scale kindness and decency by questing in the multiverse, and ideological rigidity and swift judgment have replaced his former nuance and virtue-seeking.
What Tocqueville Couldn’t See
Faith and reason aren’t opposed any more than freedom (the rallying cry of Patriots) and distributive justice (the rallying cry of social justice warriors) are opposed!
There’s No More Room: Toward an Anarcho-Pastoralism
What I’ve just attempted to describe are the joys of the edge. Freedom, I believe, has a limited half-life when it’s in the heart of civilization. Anarcho-pastoralism means that there’s…
Blessings to Impart
What’s stopping you from blessing your yard, neighbors, and neighborhood, your watershed, the land you drive over everyday? Bless the world, literally, and with your being. Offer it up to…
College, Conservation, and Computers
“What College Students Need Is a Taste of the Monk’s Life.” Molly Worthen explores the possibilities that college offers for helping students unplug from their devices and think deeply: “We…
A Twenty-First Century Agronomic University: The Maurin Academy
We use the experience of the JPII farm not only to learn and improve over time but to inform our audience of the realities and pitfalls of attempting this way…
Ferenc Hörcher On Roger Scruton
Ferenc Hörcher comes to us from Budapest where he is a professor of political science and philosophy. He is the author most recently of Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s…
A.I. Doesn’t Cause Cheating. Fear Does.
Front Royal, VA. How do you catch a cheater? This is the question that is plaguing the minds of college and high school faculty across the country this spring. No…
A Local Look at the Meanings of the Founding: A Review of The Nation that Never Was
After excluding less plausible interpretations like Roosevelt’s, I think the Old Testamentish version of the Founding is the most defensible: the Founders left us some good principles which later were…
A Beautiful Farm?
These benefits and this healing can only begin to happen when beauty is allowed once again on the farm. One cannot truly have a good farm without it.
Payne Hollow, Ice Cream, and National Parks
“Thriving on the Fringe of Society.” Carrie Blackmore Smith describes the life that Harlan and Anna Hubbard made at Payne Hollow and the work now being done to restore and…
Observing Limits to Re-enchant a Mute World: A Review of The Uncontrollability of the World
Even Rosa the respectable sociologist entertains the possibility that if we relearned how to listen, the mountains might speak. Perhaps they too have their spirits, mute but waiting.
Are Americans Better Off?
Let’s just say you’d better have great discipline and a very rich interior life if you expect to be happy amid great affluence. If this is true of individuals, that…
Silage and the Silence of the Corncrake
I’ve been talking to elderly friends here in the Irish countryside about what they used to do when the sun shone. The answer, of course, was that they made hay.
One Homeschool Year: A Local Story in Four Seasons
One learning outcome I had in mind for this academic year was to teach all students to close the bathroom door when using the facilities. Alas, we seem to have…