The Editors
Articles by The Editors
Election Reflections, 2016 (Part 1)
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] With the exception of one big think piece on our almost-certainly-soon-to-be-POTUS, Hillary Clinton, I've been quiet this presidential election. I think that's because, in the…
Trump in Context
Sioux Center, Iowa. In what he represents, Donald Trump is not as unique as either his admirers or his despisers think. How do we explain the Trump phenomenon? When he…
Patmore: Prophetic Political Pessimist (and Localist?)
“Nations die of softening of the brain, which, for a long time, passes for softening of the heart.” “Democracy is only a continually shifting aristocracy of money, impudence, animal energy…
Back There Where the Past Was
From The American Conservative, memories of the Crooked Lake Review gang.
Dy-No-Mite!
Minnesota's second literary Nobelist is the subject of The Political World of Bob Dylan: Freedom and Justice, Power and Sin, a perceptive book by our porchite colleague Jeff Taylor. Herewith…
Hillary’s Communitarian Moment, and Ours
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Thirteen months ago, I wrote a blog post that provided a retrospective on a body of ideas on the 20th anniversary of the greatest level…
Twenty Years Now, Where’d They Go?
The Future of Freedom Foundation has reprinted "The Empire versus Little America," my speech from what was, in a parallel universe, the epochal 2010 conference that begat the peace group…
Going Down to Vanity Fair
Over a long and colorful career, the phrase “Vanity Fair” has called up wildly divergent associations, while often seeming to mean nothing at all. Is it a place? A quality?…
From The Multiversity Cave: Conclusion
Saginaw, MI This is the final post of a series that explored what prominent thinkers can teach us about today’s public multiversity, the modern university with its many colleges, departments,…
Giving Thanks for Russell Kirk’s Long Shadow
And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate —but there…
Ralph Nader to Host Hometown Book Festival
The tireless consumer advocate and presidential candidate will be hosting the "Booming Winsted" book festival on July 30-31 in his hometown of Winsted, Connecticut. From the press release: “This is…
At Least His Priorities Are in the Right Place
From The Telegraph: Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, attended a meeting of his local allotment association on Sunday despite the resignation of most of his shadow cabinet. With the mounting…
A Space for Children in the Home
“If children do not have space to release a tremendous amount of energy when they need to, they will drive themselves and everybody else in the family up the wall.”…
Agrarian Fireworks
If you’re like me, holidays leave you feeling unusually contemplative, I suppose because the everyone-is-doing-it mentality awakens in us the long-slumbering cultural anthropologist. Holidays cause me to wonder why, exactly, we do what we do…
Who Are Public Monuments For?
History is a lie. Or, rather, a complex galaxy of truths, half-truths, exaggerations, and downplayings that together form a narrative. We don’t write histories because we want to record what…
Gene, Everlasting (1932–2016)
For some time, I saw Gene Logsdon as a wiry bearded fellow in slouch hat and knee boots, striding purposefully across a field he was sowing by hand. That was…
The United Kingdom Votes “Localism”
When Front Porch Republic came into the world seven years ago, it did so largely on the strength of an intuition. Everyone was weary of "bigness." The financial collapse triggered by the…
In (Partial) Defense of the Liberal Arts Degree
One of the articles which recently crossed my desk was an interactive online presentation from Georgetown University’s Centre on Education and the Workforce, highlighting which college majors are the most…
Ten Theses on Our Populist Moment
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Tomorrow, with the California Democratic primary, the populist developments that so many have observed in this electoral cycle will definitively change. Either Sanders will prevail…
Regional Cities and the Curse of “Glocality”
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] One of the essential themes in my continuing study of and reflection upon the character and dilemmas of mid-sized cities is their "regional" character, and…
The Dirt on Your Shoes
Today, I needed to get my shoes shined. I usually shine them myself, but I forgot this morning. Luckily, in my building in downtown Indianapolis, there is a shoe shine…
What I’ve Learned, and David Brooks (Perhaps) Still Hasn’t
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Among all the major right-wing voices of America's mainstream journalistic establishment, David Brooks is perhaps the most difficult to pin down. Ross Douthat is a…
Growing Up Stoic
For our home-schooling lessons my daughter and I have been reading Greek and Roman philosophers, and she has taken a shine to the Stoics – not only reading them with…
From the Multiversity Cave: Students and the State
Saginaw, MI This post is part of a series that will explore what prominent thinkers can teach us about today’s public multiversity, the modern university with its many colleges, departments,…