The Editors
Articles by The Editors
The Worst?
2020 has certainly had real trials and tribulations, but our approach to it is also reflective of a culture in which everything disliked has long been “the worst.”
Institutions Rescue George Bailey
George offers his joyful holiday greetings to these institutions as if they were persons, bodies that saw his town through good and bad, through war and peace.
Some Possibly Helpful Thoughts on Localism, Populism, and Proximity During a Pandemic
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The departure of Donald Trump from the White House [crosses fingers] will assuredly not mean the departure of Trumpism from American life. The collection of…
Ministry in a Place of Poverty
There is nothing morally wrong with being poor, and the stigmatization that affects the poor probably only adds more to their burden.
Beauty and Imagination in Christian Witness
When we see that beauty and imagination, rightly understood, are intellectual as well as affective, we no longer have to try to bridge some gap between imagination and reality.
Why The Cult of Smart is a Book for Every Parent in 2020 (Whether Anarcho-Socialist or Not)
The Cult of Smart is deeply entrenched in most modern systems of public education around the world, and the increasingly clear reality of cognitive and genetic differences between different human…
The Battle Rages On: Eric Adler’s Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today
We all want students to think critically and to reflect on what they have encountered in the course of their education. In order to do that, however, they must have…
Home, Revisited
The pandemic has provided an opportunity to recenter our lives around home and family
William Newton On Enjoying & Living With Art
Art critic William Newton joins me in this episode to discuss how to approach art. How to learn about it, appreciate it, and also acquire it. William is an attorney,…
Mr. Munson’s Mustang: A Fable
"In order to implement vital system updates, you must install the Trans-Mog-Z Facilitator, available at any Big Horizon Automotive Intervention Center. This has been your first notice.”
The Promise and Forgiveness of Hillbilly Elegy
Hillbilly Elegy is indeed political, but in a deeper sense, entangled as it is in the webs of broken promises and repeated forgiveness.
Saving String, Kicking Leaves: Donald Hall’s Elegies
Hall’s elegiac poetry and prose teach grim lessons that are worth heeding, but there is also a sort of unsentimental, necessary hope—a hope for continuity and unexpected rebirth, a hope…
Daniel Rattelle On Poetry, Place, and Berry & Merton
Poet Dan Rattelle joins the podcast to discuss his new collection Commonwealth from Little Gidding Press. We discuss the idea of place and how Scotland and New England have influenced…
Max Picard’s Silence
Perhaps, without silence for a reference point—something out there that reminds us of our place in the big order of things—the masters of information feel free to shade, obscure, or…
On the Difficulty of Civic Friendship and Unity in an Angry Time
With the hope that the self-promotion involved doesn't obviate whatever potential value the words written may convey, here is something I wrote, which I'd like to believe will be of…
Re-membering the Body: A Review of What It Means to Be Human
This book at least provides a compelling diagnostic starting point, calling us back to our own networks of dependence and encouraging us to pursue friendship, particularly in the most challenging…
“Seventy Years Ago”: A Review of Red Stilts by Ted Kooser
Ordinary and unrefined, Kooser's poems suggest the steady hand of a craftsman who doesn’t need to go looking for the next big thing.
More than a Step on the Boss Man’s Ladder
If Dolly Parton left the Smoky Mountains, it seems to have been on a hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell would have recognized. She came back, bearing gifts.
The Anti-Federalists Were Right About Trump (and Many Other Things as Well)
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Gillian Brockell, a talented writer and researcher for The Washington Post's history blog Retropolis, interviewed four esteemed historians and scholars of the Constitution, about what,…
Introduction to Real Characters
"What we have for neighbors out here is–well–more interesting. We have way more folks who are just themselves and nobody else.”
Jacques Barzun’s 1937 Critique of Race-Thinking
On the heels of a consequential election, and the accompanying commentary demonstrating the continued pervasiveness of race-thinking, Barzun’s message of honoring each human individual’s value while recognizing our shared common…
What is Beauty? A Review of The Father of Lights
The idea that “no arguments or reasons have to be given to enable the experience of beauty” is dearly hopeful in a time when arguments and reasons are largely impotent…
It’s a Federalist’s World, After All
Amidst the ongoing chaos and conflict over the 2020 presidential election, and vote tabulating methodologies in particular, let’s remember—and celebrate—that so far it is really only federalism that has won…
A Country Boy Can Thrive
You can leave your corner of the country without escaping it. And these memoirs testify to the importance of bringing something back.