The Editors
Articles by The Editors
A Primer on Digital Thinking Part 2: Eliminating the Human Element
In Part 1, I outlined the basic difference between counting and measuring and gave some examples of how data is not always objectively derived. Now I want to move the…
The Facebookification of Local Politics: Extending the Wall of the Bathroom Stall
In 2014, Cambridge Analytica used an app called thisisyourdigitallife to surreptitiously obtain data from 50 million Facebook accounts. They then used all of this information in 2016 to help Donald Trump’s…
Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris and the Problem of Bigness
In The Everlasting Man, a masterpiece of Christian apologetics, G. K. Chesterton opens Chapter 1 with something of a mocking hat tip to the “scientific custom of beginning [a book,…
A Primer on Digital Thinking: Part 1 Counting and Measuring
The basic distinction between digital and analog is that digital means you count something and analog means you measure something. We can easily count discrete objects like apples, oranges, and…
Culture as the Discovery of Meaning
The resurgent debate between Christians that defend classical liberalism and those that critique liberalism tout court has been deeply instructive. This debate, however, threatens to obscure a deeply held alliance and…
Blowing Up the Bert: The Outside Story
Two years ago I witnessed the abrupt transformation of an old and distinguished literary magazine. For the people doing the transforming, of course, the changes were long overdue. The overhaul…
Jimmy Carter, Front Porch Republican
Via The Washington Post, a profile of the quiet, deeply local, exceptionally frugal, profoundly humble life lived by the only actual small-c "conservative" to have been elected President of the…
Chesterton and Belloc are not Enough
In preparing a new volume of essays titled Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence (1936), Allen Tate and Herbert Agar sought to extend the political argument for agrarianism beyond…
The Names of Things
An old painting by John Miles of Northleach imagines Adam in the midst of naming all the animals in the Garden of Eden. Adam stands in the middle of the…
Redeeming Capitalism is an Uphill Battle
Recently there has been a growing sense that capitalism is at best a mixed blessing. Though the material benefits that accompany its massive wealth creation are real and significant, capitalism…
My Àntonia at One Hundred
Willa Cather is the quintessential novelist of the American prairie. That distinction comes to her first because she spent her formative years on the prairie in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather…
Conservation by the Yard
I begin with a proposition adapted from Wendell Berry—namely, that mowing is an ecological act. Mowing extends the perennial drama of photosynthesis and carbon cycling. Too few lawn owners, however,…
Free Labor: The Liberation Theology of Capitalism
Capitalism as Theology In his seminal work, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak provides his readers with a “Theology of Democratic Capitalism.”1 Now, some might find his theology a…
Cheese Should Be Dangerous
The cheese crafted here came about as a byproduct of a larger whole, the natural dividend of a complete way of life, and this is the foundation of the best…
Love in the Void: A New Collection of Simone Weil’s Writings
This selection of writings aims to make manifest to the reader Simone Weil’s “intensity in the pursuit of truth” and the “sense of the eternal which Weil had to an…
Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet, published earlier this year, is a fabulous book. Not a perfect book; sometimes, in order to bulk…
Social Isolation as the Fruit of Liberalism
Loneliness is on the rise. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people. Our social media networks may number in the hundreds, even thousands, but it…
A Flexible Disposition
In 2018, to discuss America’s future is to discuss uncertainty. It is true, of course, that talking about the future—a predictive game dependent on chance as much as it is…
The Formative Power of Metrics
Living in an age where information is merely a click (or swipe) away, we are inundated with metrics. Quantitative data is directed our way at alarming speeds leaving us unable to…
The Cost of Knowing One’s Place
The first time you read the novels of Thomas Hardy–especially if you read them as a young adult–you’re likely to get a pretty forceful impression. With the story-telling powers of…
Backyard Beekeeping
I had long resisted adding ten thousand new livestock to our less than two acres. I had listened to beekeepers’ tales of bears and had read enough about varroa mites…
Should You Move?
Charles Mahron has opened up what I think to be a great, even essential, discussion that fans of localism and sustainability and community of every possible stripe ought to have:…
Summoning Jeremiah
The Call to Prophecy When we think of the great biblical prophets, we might be tempted to think of people concerned mainly with wholly religious or purely spiritual matters. But…
What Do Farmers Want?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The obvious response to the title of this post is: I don't know; why don't you ask one? Well, Robert Wuthnow and his researchers did,…