The Editors
Articles by The Editors
Rob Koons: Attacking Iran Would Be Unjust
Since the first Gulf War, it has been popular among many Christian (especially but not exclusively Catholic) conservatives to justify American military interventions via just-war theory -- which conveniently always…
“You Ever Get Back There Any More?”
Down on the Square (as we East Texas natives refer to the downtown in Henderson, pop. 11,000), I make a visit to the backroom of the Strong-Hurt Pharmacy, site for…
“Freedom or Virtue?” Revisited
About this time last year, Mitch Daniels, the Republican Governor of Indiana, stirred some controversy by calling on conservatives to declare a truce on so-called “social issues” so that they…
Our Libertarian Future
I was invited by the good people at "Minding the Campus" to write a response to the recently released 2011 American Freshman Survey. My brief essay is now available on…
Mallon Time
I was delighted to see that Thomas Mallon, a superb novelist whose subject is often American politics (my favorites are Henry and Clara and Two Moons), has just published Watergate:…
Religious Liberty?
Alexandria, VA. Vast and even incalculable quantities of ink have already been spilled over the issue of the HHS mandate that religious organizations purchase contraception as part of their compliance…
Driving Around the Panopticon
Plenty of space, I concluded with a glance at the approaching headlights in my left mirror. I let the clutch out smoothly and started what felt like a routine merge…
A Day Late, and a Mint Julep Short
I had previously thought that Ground Hog Day was strictly a holiday for the residents of the virtuous commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Turns out that the day is celebrated far and…
On Wisconsin
My friend Paul Buhle, the great historian of the American left, has edited, with his wife Mari Jo Buhle, It Started in Wisconsin: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the…
Saul Alinsky, Localist
Well no, not exactly. But as anyone who has ACTUALLY READ ALINSKY KNOWS--in contrast to those who simply parrot his name as part of rather stretched smear of anyone they…
Seen Your Video
This is the last audience to which I should announce such a thing but after fumbling an editing gig or two because I lacked a one-stop site containing my bio,…
The Closing of the Republican Mind (A Séance)
Lucky me, to be invited to try the beta version of Google’s newest and coolest app — Séance! After a quick download and install, I wasted no time in launching…
Globalize or Localize? Beyond the Post-American World
In the January 9, 2012 issue of Time magazine, Fareed Zakaria comments on what he calls “A Post-American World in Progress.” Zakaria observes that none of the world’s rising powers,…
In Beauty We Should Damn Well Trust
Washington, Ct. The recent contretemps between the blessedly described “liberal conservatives” at the First Things web site and our own clutch of barking mongrels here at the homespun Porch revealed…
Super Cuts
Brian (no relation to Lefty) Frizzell, Brooklyn's archivist of Americana, sends a link to Matt Morris's Pickin' & Trimmin' http://vimeo.com/31066145, a lovely documentary short film about a barbershop in Drexel, North…
Gatewood Galbraith, Tertium Quid, RIP
You who think that all of the principle and most of the color have gone out of politics never had the opportunity to vote for Gatewood Galbraith.
Huzzah for the Montana Supreme Court!
This is the kind of states' rights I like: Montana’s Supreme Court has issued a stunning rebuke to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 that infamously decreed…
Gas Bag
George Will has penned an end-of-year pick-me-up for conservatives, counseling them that the likely prospect of Republican Presidential electoral defeat in November (given their sad slate of potential nominees) ought…
Iowa is for Peace-Lovers
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---Our daughter will be spending the snowy months rehearsing her role as Marian the Librarian in her high school’s production of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man,” that tuneful…
Occupy Food! (And Other Simple Things)
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] As Christmas and the end of 2011 approaches, I find myself thinking gratefully about what Leroy Hershberger has enabled my students and me to learn…
Tonight I Feel So Far Away From Home…
This Christmas--like last Christmas, and the one before that , and the one before that....--hundreds of thousands of our countrymen and women are far from their homes and families, fighting…
The Founding Gardeners
I’ve just finished Andrea Wulf’s beguiling book entitled “ Founding Gardeners, The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation”. Published this year by Knopf, it delves into…
Just Don’t Say God
In this season of the "holidays," it was announced several days ago that Fairfax County schools would be permitted to install video surveillance cameras in High Schools. Fairfax County is…