The Editors
Articles by The Editors
Vonnegut Laid(?) to Rest
Burned-Over District, NY---I’m reading Charles J. Shields’s absorbing new biography of Kurt Vonnegut, And So It Goes, and while its morose subject deservedly never won Father or Husband of the…
Que Surratt, Surratt
When next you stumble into the corner video store: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/redford-goes-ron-paul/
iHero: Steve Jobs, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Modern Heroism
The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was a civil rights legend and American hero. Born deep in the Jim Crow south during the 1920s, he grew from the humble, but durable roots…
Defending Distributism
Until one of us finds the time to slap down Joe Carter's attack on distributism (as Rod Dreher called upon us to do), I'll direct our good readers to a…
A Newer Atlantis
I received the latest issue of the essential journal The New Atlantis yesterday, and was honored once again to appear in its pages. The essay in question - entitled "The…
Occupy Oligarchy!
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has proved to be significant in its appeal – a majority of Americans support the movement, even though it has been less than articulate in…
Power Made Perfect in Weakness
If we expect others to rely on our fairness and justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice. —Calvin Coolidge My wife and I recently vacationed…
Front Porch Revival?
The Atlantic Cities blog this month takes a look at a quarterly home design trend survey from the American Institute of Architects. Apparently in hard economic times, homeowners have different…
Compensation: The Cultural Contradictions of Philanthrocapitalism
Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess. — Ralph Waldo Emerson It is appropriate that Robin Rogers begins her informative essay on the state of philanthrocapitalism with a…
Back to Texas
I will be lecturing tomorrow, Thursday, November 17 at the University of Texas at Austin. My lecture is entitled "Why Great Books?" and is being sponsored by the Jefferson Center…
Don’t It Make You Wanna Go Home Now?
Mobility is the great undiagnosed sickness afflicting America. All of our ruling class and most of our writing class consist of deracinated careerists who scorn the placebound as ambitionless losers…
Classic Cinema and Our Future
I want to see films for all ages, devoid of hip countercultural irony. I want to see low-budget teleplays in which today’s equivalent of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland put…
If Not Exceptional, How about Unusual
I am loathe to dissent from Mark Mitchell's thoughtful piece on American exceptionalism, true FroPo that I am. And I could simply add a comment to the post along with…
Mafia Among the Mountain Folk, Part II
“I don’t care if you bring the president of Peru and a thousand police—we’ll be carried out dead before you dig here!” Thus was the position of the twenty or…
Rebuilding a rural economy
Readers of this site might be interested in a recent Daily Yonder newsstory on job creation in southeastern Ohio. This Ford Foundation-underwritten project is trying to create rural jobs by adding value…
Come Saturday Evening…
....we'll be reading aloud--for the fourteenth consecutive year--from the works of Batavia's native (if sometimes wayward) son John Gardner. Where? The Pokadot, literary-culinary capital of NY, at the corner of…
Rousseau on Economics
"If what you wish is merely to make a great splash, to be impressive and formidable, to influence other peoples of Europe, you have before you their example: get busy…
B Movies–in Black and White
No, not the tune by the Fabulous Poodles, but rather my memories of Peter H. Clune, who was gunned down in the bleakest film noir you'll ever see: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/the-last-picture-show/.
George F. Will and the Decline of the Tory
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS I don't know how many people in the conservative public sphere read George F. Will closely any longer--maybe lots of them do, but…
To the Windy City and the Golden Dome
I'll be in The City of the Big Shoulders this Thursday and Friday, October 13-14, both to attend and to participate in a conference at the University of Chicago honoring…
October, Momma, and Memory
It is a reminder that our own personal winter is coming. When you are daily reminded of your own bones by pains in your joints, seeing a skeleton dangling from…
The Capivari Option: A Local Currency Bolsters a Poor Town
On September 20, 2011 the Wall Street Journal ran an article on the advantages of localism to the poorest parts of Brazil. Paulo Prada, reporting from Brazil, interviewed townspeople who…
Global Warming, Local Farming, and Naomi Klein: A Trip to the Land Institute
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS A couple of weeks ago some fine intellectuals, political figures, journalists, and activists associated with this blog gathered together to talk about localism,…