Culture, High & Low 728
On ‘The Fall’ and That Obama Video
Yes, yes. I know the election is over and, as a third-party voter myself, I don’t believe I’ll smell like sour grapes here regarding the results, but still there’s something…
The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age
Here is an excerpt from my recently published book: The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age. American politics is broken. One of the few things…
On Thanks-Giving
Hidden Springs Lane. It’s been a long political season. Some Americans are excited about the prospect of an Obama second term. Others are despondent. Many on both sides are exhausted.…
Life Under Compulsion: If Teachers Were Plumbers
This is Part IV of a series of essays. For previous installments of "Life Under Compulsion," see Part I, Part II, and Part III. “Good morning, Mr. Jones,” says the man…
The View from Your Front Porch
The View from My Front Porch, or Why We Bought the Farm by Andrea Kirk Assaf Remus, Michigan. The view from my gray…
After Romney: Republican Soul-Searching
These remarks were delivered before the Notre Dame College Republicans at a panel devoted to discussing the future of the Republican Party. As an independent, I am not especially interested…
A Post-Election Symposium
The following is a series of reflections and ruminations on Decision 2012, courtesy of FPR writers-at-large. Winnebago County, IL. Following Standard Operating Procedures, Republican bosses in Washington [and their lackeys…
Post Mortem
Holland, MI Let it be said that there is no longer any politically relevant conservative voice in America. The conservative movement has been thoroughly ghettoized. The only party that paid…
Life Under Compulsion: The Billows Teaching Machine
Charlie Chaplin is working on an assembly line. He tightens bolts with a pair of wrenches. He does this without stop, over and over, for hours on end. The repetitive…
Of Bees and Boys
My brother Brett and I were polite but rambunctious children who made a game of killing bees and dumping their carcasses into buckets of rainwater. Having heard that bees, like…
Limits and Conscientious Consumption
Lincoln, I was informed when I was nine years old, freed the slaves. I learned that lesson well; I was an excellent student. Lincoln freed the slaves and, in my…
Slow Democracy
The protestors stood on the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, brandishing bowls of penne pasta. Above them rose the wide marble staircase of the Spanish Steps; nearby, turquoise water spilled…
Not Hurting Anybody
At the film festival in Cannes this past summer and at the Toronto film festival in the fall, Nick Cassavetes brought to the screen his new film Yellow. It is…
Life Under Compulsion: From Schoolhouse to School Bus
“Imagine,” said my friend, “how long it takes the bus to go from Little Anse,” a village at the extreme end of the island where my family and I spend…
The Passing of Two Great Intellectual Historians
News of the passing of Gene Genovese and Henry May took the wind out of these aging sails. In addition to reading these historians while in grad school almost thirty…
Lessons on Limits from the Cougar Prophet
If a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, I took my prescription of limits and localism with a spoon full of pretty sweet sugar indeed. About 20…
Leaving Washington
Notre Dame, IN. It was on the virtual “pages” of the Front Porch Republic that I announced last February that I was leaving Georgetown University, in Washington D.C., to accept a…
Life Under Compulsion
In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist Sigrid Undset fled to the countryside…
Political Hope, Spiritual Longing
The following is an excerpt from a new book by Eric Miller: Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings. Of all the distinctive raiment with which Americans garb themselves,…
Hospitality at a Fractured Table
“It sure is hard to have people over to dinner these days,” the food writer lamented, at a talk I attended the other week. She told a sorry tale of…
Crazy Quilt Conservatism
Hidden Springs, VA.Last week the Washington Post ran a story titled “Rethinking the Classroom: Obama’s Overhaul of Public Education.” The piece described the various ways Obama has asserted himself into…
How to be a Localist Anywhere
Maybe your neighborhood doesn’t have front porches or sidewalks or a farmer’s market or anywhere to shop except Target. Maybe despite the supposed modern hegemony of freedom and mobility, you…
Thought Control and Controlling Our Thoughts
Last evening I had the joy of taking a dozen-plus college students to the Abbey of the Genesee for the first of this year’s “Newman Community Book Discussion with Monks.” The…
The Springs of the Scamander
One of the most memorable passages in the Iliad occurs in Book 22, during the climactic scene when Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy. As Achilles closes…