The Editors

Devon, PA. Everyone knows the "secularization hypothesis" of the West; the only difference between one person and another is whether one also knows that it is garbage.  According to secularization…

Henry County, Kentucky. Last week here we buried our 97-year-old neighbor, a woman named Thelma Chilton Moody Clark.  Until this spring she had never been sick, “and I don't know…

Russell Arben Fox has treated us to his reflections of the recently concluded APSA annual meeting here. It would be surprising if there were anything as thematic as what he…

Hillsdale, MI. It is said that Aesop, despite making all his characters animals and thus avoiding being Nathan to his contemporary Davids, was finally thrown over a cliff by the…

Rod Dreher says Pelosi is right to fret about political violence.  He argues that it is evil to "lead people to believe [Obama is] a socialist conspiring to install an oligar(c)hy to rule…

Norman Borlaug has died, and Joe Carter calls him the world's greatest unknown hero and says that "few men have ever done more good for the human race."  He links…

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece on Philip Rieff for the American Conservative. One of the themes of Rieff’s work on which I focused was his concept…

Via The American Conservative, a few thoughts on the land of three downs: www.amconmag.com/article/2009/oct/01/0050/.

made once again by Jesse Walker, in re the prez and the kids. He says here in about 400 words just about everything that needs to be and should be…

Devon, PA.  This week marks my daughter's third birthday.  As a way of tossing a little Front Porch confetti her way, I reprint here  "A Prayer for Livia Grace at…

It has been a year since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the subsequent near-collapse of the international economic system followed quickly by the massive increase of (at least visible)…

This post is dangerously close to turf already claimed by Bill Kaufman and Jason Peters. But the appeal of Richard Russo is so strong that if FPR readers do not…

  Jefferson County, Kansas. The following is a short excerpt from a longer essay in the forthcoming book The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, co-edited by our own Mark Mitchell.  Mark…

Washington, Ct. In his wonderful 1974 book entitled The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk remarks upon the British and how they are able to "muddle through" periods of social…

A new semester begins at Georgetown and around the country, a delicious time of early Fall anticipation of possibility and the unexpected - at least until the second week of…

“Hontar:  We must work in the world, your eminence. The world is thus. Altamirano: No, Señor Hontar. Thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it.” From The…

This is, at last, the last chapter of my new book, Equity and Equilibrium: The Political Economy of Distributism. I post it here because so many questions have arisen on…

Wichita, KS I just returned from my near-annual pilgrimage to the American Political Science Association's annual convention...this year held, ironically enough, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I didn't mind--it meant I'd…

Ah, September.  The enervating heat of August is less, and school starts up again with all the hopefulness and energy of a new academic year.  I still feel the year…

For Maureen Drdak, If she will accept it as part of our good conversation. Devon, PA. I shall be returning to the following subject frequently in the next few weeks: the need…

Moorpark, CA.  In October of 1997 I attended the Southern Historical Association’s convention in Atlanta because I wanted to hear Paul Conkin’s presidential address, “Hot, Humid, and Sad.”  What I…

We set up here on the porch six months ago today. Many words later, it's still a nice place to relax and shoot the breeze. To mark the occasion, a…

Claremont, CA. Tomato, the main character in Erika Lopez’s terrifically kooky Flaming Iguanas, loves the post office. She says, to be precise, that she has a “profound love for the…