The Editors
Articles by The Editors
A Dictionary of Dumb Ideas: Tradition vs. Convention
We should aim to conserve what is deepest and true, not just what happens to have immediately preceded the present. It should be the conservative’s task to reconnect the manner…
After the Second Cheer: A Review of Two Cheers for Politics
Purdy has a palpable affection for what he calls “the preservative work of being together.” Beginning again from that affection might allow Purdy and his readers to find a fuller…
The Power of Place: Wildsam Field Guides
The success of Wildsam is a reminder that many people want to experience the real. Every day we are marketed generic and homogenous products and destinations, but there is an…
Dana Gioia’s Bright Twilight
Out on the wrinkled sea, the high notes come shimmering over the cold waves, and 72-year-old Dana Gioia says, “Meet me at the Lighthouse.”
What I Learned in Grad School
Temperamentally and vocationally, I was in the wrong place. Yet I don’t regret a single day I spent there—not only because I met my wife, but because I learned to…
Kevin Gutzman on The Jeffersonians
Kevin Gutzman is Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University. He has published half a dozen books on Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitution. His latest book is The Jeffersonians.…
Awkward Family Dinner: A Review of Reforming Classical Education
Any reformation requires a standard. How else could you measure progress? The standard of reviving classical learning should plainly include those revered authors who inspired and contributed to that tradition.
After Virtual: Civic Life
The After Virtual conference podcast series closes with a focus on civics and cemeteries. Mark Mitchell, author of Plutocratic Socialism, talks on, well, plutocrats and socialism (plus the importance of…
Wayne Coyne and the Creative Benefits of Fry Cooking
By contrast, developing skill through direct contact with nature increases our confidence, efficacy, and even patience. Although fry cooks have a shorter learning curve than motorcycle mechanics or hockey players,…
Call the Midwife: Twenty-First Century Edition
Having experienced pregnancy and childbirth with both a traditionally trained OB/GYN and with midwives, the philosophical differences are abundantly clear.
In Schooling as in Life, More Than Enough is Too Much
Being a teacher is a demanding job, whether in a college, school, or home setting. It requires tremendous energy, responsiveness, and mental flexibility. It requires that you, the teacher, also…
Heating with Wood as a Habit of Mind
I enjoy certain utilitarian advantages by heating with wood, but I also prefer the habits of mind—attention, connection, succession, frugality—that my woodpile’s growth and contraction inspires.
Raj Bhakta & (Very) Old Armagnac
My guest is Raj Bhakta. Raj is a true practitioner of the art of cultural debris. From founding one of the first premium whiskey brands, Whistle Pig—based out of Vermont,…
Phantom Menace: America’s Enduring Fixation with Fascism
The reader may be none the wiser regarding the definition of fascism, but this book affords a wisdom and moderation of sorts all the same, one that stems from the…
Virtue Signaling and Cheap Grace
Changing the phrase “field work” to “practicum” is, without more comprehensive action, a perfect illustration of cheap grace. It costs USC nothing more than some online eye-rolling to do.
Communities of Memory
To know a particular hometown, with its triumphs and tragedies, its gains and losses, its names and namesakes, its heroes and eccentrics, its myths and peculiarities, its landmarks and symbols,…
Samson-Oak: A Review of The Common Misfortunes of Everyday Plants
Nature is never pure in these poems; it is always responding to human care or lack-of-care, commodified, and, indeed, turned into a symbol by the poet herself. Emerson doesn't hide…
After Virtual: Health
The penultimate session from the FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods addresses health. Philosopher Adam Smith from the University of Dubuque and medical doctor Brian Volck,…
The Power of Place: Huckberry’s Dirt
Huckberry’s success speaks to a desire for adventure and relationship with the land within the American public. People want to go backpacking and hiking and ride their motorcycles across the…
Hard Times, Landscape, and Memory
The memory of pain has the power to protect our joy. The land, the place, the names, the people; these are what connect us to today and to every past…
Os Guinness & The Great Quest
My guest is Os Guinness, long a resident of the Washington, D.C. area, Guinness was born in China and educated at Oxford. He is a prolific author, most recently of…
The Coming Cow Wars: Why Raising Cows is a Revolutionary Act
To nurture small-scale local agriculture is to oppose the Maoist, Stalinesque, Hitlerian, Huxlian, Schwabian, Gatesian push to monopolize global food production. My cows plod the Underground. And I plod along…
Wyrd Winter Wondered Worlds
Parker’s Winters in the World is an education fit for the Humanities and lay person who wishes to expand upon what it means to exist as humans in a world…
The Power of Place: TrueSouth
As populations and employments shift, the South reflects transitions affecting the nation as a whole. Wherever we are, the place around us is changing. Yet it also has a history…