Economics & Empire 369
This is My Son
Devon, PA. This is my son. As you see him here, he has been alive for just about one-hundred-forty days and has, this and other ultrasound images suggest, my nose…
Localism And Cosmopolites
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Remarking on Jeremy Beer's article on meritocracy, Patrick Deneen concludes with this grim, but correct, observation: This, in a microcosm, is a central paradox of our political system:…
The Economics of Distributism Part 1: Does Capitalism Work?
Property in the hands of labor is freedom. Labor in the hands of property is slavery. --Dmitri Kleiner From the earliest days of Distributism, distributists have exhibited a certain disinterest…
A Nation of Slaves?
Difficult economic times force people to confront the problem of economic security. In fact, it’s easy to imagine that, in an ideal world, economic insecurity would be a thing of…
Act Like a Man, and We’ll Arrest You
Interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer today about a blind man from Brussels who, not bein' from around these parts, didn't realize that American freedom meant the Freedom Not to…
Mortgaged Myth and the Monuments of a Depauperate Republic
Washington, CT. In August of 1311, the Doge of Venice.... as big shots are wont to do.... decreed that a monument to the government would henceforth be constructed and its…
The Decline of Middle America and the Problem of Meritocracy
I delivered a version of the following text as a lecture at Augustana College last Tuesday, April 28 (all errors of fact and interpretation should be ascribed to my…
A Disposable Society
Princeton, NJ At most cafes today there is a station where packets of sugar, canisters of milk and cream, and coffee stirrers are conveniently available for the personalization of each…
Nation at the Crossroads
RINGOES, NJ. The world is hunkered down. For some months now we have been holding our collective breath, waiting to see if the financial meltdown is going to stabilize or…
Life in Circle Six
Irving, Texas. G. K. Chesterton begins his Utopia of Usurers with a description of a world in which all art has become commercial art. He does not find it out…
Taking Secession Seriously–At Last
Mt. Pleasant, SC--As little as I wished to make my first post for FPR an overtly political essay on contemporary affairs--I had meant to rumination growing up in a small…
Causes and Lessons of the Current Economic Crisis
ERIE, PA. As a new contributor to the Front Porch Republic, I would like to thank Mark Mitchell for his invitation to participate in what is shaping up to be…
Walking to School, Slackerdom, and Other Revolutionary Acts
Wichita, KS I was born in 1968, and my childhood was the 1970s. My family lived, during those years, in five different homes (all in the same county, though, so…
A Call to Arms
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The review below was first published in the Intercollegiate Review in the fall of 2006. Look Homeward, America was my first introduction to the work of the…
I Want to Be a Consumer
A bit of doggerel from Punch Magazine (25 April 1934). I Want to Be a Consumer “And what do you mean to be?” The kind old Bishop said As he…
Abraham Lincoln and the Destruction of Place
In case you missed it, 2009 is the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Earlier this week I participated in a roundtable discussion on Lincoln’s legacy sponsored by Messiah College and…
Walkaway
In addition to frequent searches that lead people to an earlier posting on "monoculture" on my site "What I Saw in America," among the most frequently searched words that bring…
Letter from a Traditional Conservative
Devon, PA. Upon reading an essay of Patrick Deneen's, a close and dear relative recently wrote me, protesting the uselessness of the terms "liberal" and "conservative." They are simplifying terms, and inadequate…
Tea Party
Last week's motley collection of protests against taxation, centralization and the Government are now old news, but their spirit remains perennially relevant. Invoked in the name of the original "Boston…
Price, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS.* In 1947, two titans of 20th-century economic theory, Ludwig von Mises and Wilhelm Röpke, met in Röpke's home of Geneva, Switzerland. During the war, the Genevan fathers coped…
April 15
Princeton, NJ I have to admit, I have been finding it difficult to write much of anything of late. This is a fairly unusual condition - usually I find no…
The Dismal Science vs. Community
RINGOES, NJ. In 1944 two very different but related books were published. The first was F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. In a world that seemed to be succumbing…
The Wise Old Œconomist
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Before it became a science of supply and demand and the circulation of commodities, economics was originally understood as the wisdom of household management. The Greek word…
TAC Counter-Programming on Tea-Party Day
FPR readers should certainly check out the American Conservative today. First, they have a new essay up by Dermot Quinn on the relationship of Wilhelm Ropke's ideas to the current…