The Editors
Articles by The Editors
What Does it Take to Keep Small Rural Towns Alive?
On the basis of this story out of Morland, KS (population 150, or thereabouts), the answer seems to me: community determination (citizens forming a local foundation to purchase and keep…
Being Thankful for National Communities and Civil Religion, Sometimes
[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res] Amongst those Americans who believe that the civic virtues which make both popular government and a fulfilling independence possible are themselves dependent upon, to a…
Post-Antibiotic
Every morning when I would shuffle to our refrigerator to lug out the gallon of milk for cereal, or after school when I'd stand in front of it wondering if…
First Lecture
On Monday, November 11, I delivered the first "First Lecture" to students at the University of Notre Dame. This series - modeled on the idea of the "Last Lecture" -…
What You Need to Know About Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince while unemployed and in exile following the restoration of the Medici to Florentine rule in 1512. He dedicated it to Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of…
The Anti-multitasker, RIP
The Stanford professor who debunked the myth of effective multitasking, Clifford Nass, died unexpectedly of a heart attack on November 2. But he leaves behind his interesting work on the…
A spook speaks–just in time for Halloween
For those readers at all interested in Angela Merkel's dismay, or the reach of our homeland spy agencies, here are a few pertinent quotes from Paul Pillar, speaking on NPR's…
Gardnering at Night, Again
Anyone blessed enough to be within shouting distance of Batavia, New York, this Saturday, October 26, at 8 pm is invited to drop by the Pok-a-Dot, venerable and funky diner,…
Too Big To Fix
Hillsdale, Mich. Misery loves company, they say, but maybe not if the company is Comcast. Yes, I have returned to a subject of previous kvetching, though this time I am…
You Did Build That and You’re Receiving a Builder’s Discount
Hillsdale, Michigan. Thanks to Comcast (who says I never thank them), I noticed a headline from the Daily Beast today about the 20 most affordable colleges. The hook was trying…
Piercing Hawkeye
"I love Old October so/I can't bear to see her go," sang the Hoosier Poet of this most resplendent and melancholy month. Among the gifts this October brings is the…
What You Need to Know About John Lukacs
John Lukacs (1924-) is one of the last great narrative historians, to be numbered among Jacques Gibbon, Jacques Barzun, George Kennan and Samuel A. Huntington. Lukacs wrote more than twenty books,…
Paranoia Will Destroy Ya
From The American Conservative, my review of Jesse Walker's terrific new book The United States of Paranoia.
The Rhetoric of War Powers
I suppose we have the Constitution we deserve--but we could fight for the one we had.
It’s Up to You Not to Heed the Call Up
During the First World War, the Kansas Socialist Kate Richards O'Hare was thrown into prison for violating Woodrow Wilson's Espionage Act. Her crime? Telling a North Dakota audience that their…
What You Need to Know About Michel Foucault
This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…
Community among Academics: An Economist’s Retrospective
Two weeks ago I spoke to an orientation program for new faculty at Pepperdine. I shared with them what I had been told at my new faculty orientation nineteen years…
What You Need to Know About Mozart
This is an entry in FPR’s One Thousand Words series. Over the next few months, perhaps longer, several dozen contributors will tell us what we need to know about a…
Life Under Compulsion: The Minotaur
When we lose the sense of transcendence, when in our hearts and minds the things of time are no longer oriented toward eternity, then, writes Jacques Maritain in The Range…
Water Cooler Republic?
Hillsdale, Michigan. Sports is not one of the topics that regularly comes up on the Front Porch. Human flourishing, whatever that possibly could be this side of the Garden of…
Thoughts on Elshtain
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Jean Bethke Elshtain, a profound and important political theorist and ethicist, died yesterday I was lucky enough to have met her perhaps a handful of…
How To Talk About Race
Hillsdale, Michigan. After the George Zimmerman verdict, President Obama talked about the need for a conversation on race in the United States. He also made the sensible observation that such…
Holy Days, Holidays and the Weekend, or: Are we all Proletarians Now?
Archduchess Maria Theresa, wife of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Franz Stephan of Habsburg-Lothringen, is on the way to her desk. She is about to enact another of…
Everywhere at Once, Nowhere at All
“Right now, the main thing I’m taking from this conference is that PowerPoint is destroying the educational process.” The conference, organized around the theme of “Technology and Human Flourishing,” was…
