The Editors

Hillsdale, Michigan. A drive back from New England to the upper mid-West on Tuesday gave me ample time to hear the journalistic accounts of the Supreme Court's decision on Arizona's…

On a gorgeous April Wednesday I am filling in as substitute homeschool teacher. We do arithmetic; we do a language lesson about adverbs and Emily Dickinson. Then—did I mention the…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Twenty-five years ago today (I think; my memory is far from perfect) I graduated from Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley (then "Veradale"), WA.…

In the spring of 1994 my grandmother chose to go off dialysis. Four days later, she was dead. I still remember my parents waking me up in the middle of…

Ray Bradbury may be at peace, but I doubt he's resting. Herewith an old essay of mine on the boy from Waukegan as a Midwestern regionalist.

On Monday, June 11, I will be lecturing as part of the marvelous "Monteagle Sunday School Assembly," a longstanding summer community based in Chattanooga, TN. Originally inspired by the Chautauqua…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A few weeks ago I was visited by a fellow Wichita resident who was thinking about getting into politics. We talked for a while about…

Guess what's for dinner.

I came to Cairo to get a better sense of the prospects for such a global conversation. If the battle over values is likely to play out globally in this…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through a…

I make available, below, the text of a lecture I delivered in November, 2011, at University of Texas at Austin. My thanks to the Jefferson Center and Tom and Lorraine…

A mysterious author by the name of "J," a writer at the suspiciously derivatively-titled website "Back Porch Republic," has posted a thoughtful and provocative examination of "The Hunger Games" as…

The place and date of Front Porch Republic's second annual conference have been set. We'll get together on Saturday, September 15, at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. We will once…

“If you’ve never worked a tradeshow booth,” a business pal once remarked to me, “you’re not a real American.” True dat. At the Good Food Festival and Conference in Chicago…

When the daily paper is gone, where does the reporting go?

I’m delighted to note the publication of Surpassing Pleasure (Porcupine’s Quill: http://porcupinesquill.ca), a collection of poetry by John Slater, a Cistercian who is known within his order as Brother Isaac.…

As a homeschooling parent I'm continually frustrated by the difficulty of talking about why we do what we do. Homeschooling is nearly always portrayed as a flight from something: bad…

Putting Sam Peckinpah in his place: "Peckinpah Country" (from The American Conservative).

Don't miss Brad Birzer's superbly thoughtful essay "Christian Humanists Challenge the Machine." He provides a lucid historical and philosophical roadmap tracing the anti-humanism of the modern impulse of mastery, beginning…

Tom Russell, true son of the American Southwest, sings about the Man from Home. Thanks to Brian Frizzell for the link.

Washington, Ct. Classics are called such for a reason. They endure. Quite by accident frequently, for as any condemned intellectual knows, the most marketable idea prevails within the lifetime of the…

On Sunday I was the invited speaker at the magnificent National Cathedral in a series devoted to the exploration of political themes. The subject was "The State of Political Language."…

It doesn't take an acquaintance with Tocqueville to spot the flaws in many American claims about equality. Just go to school. You soon learn that an A paper is not…

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A couple of days ago, I had the lucky opportunity to listen up close to Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute here in Kansas,…