Articles

I wish environmentalists would better understand that there are no mustache-twirling billionaires drilling and digging and burning oil just for the hell and the money of it. Like money, petroleum is a very effective way to get the things we all want at the best convenience. And those in the oil industry are simply happy to oblige us and profit by their labors.

Springsteen’s music does indeed return to the things that are most important in an hour of crisis. But contrary to popular impressions, these things turn out to have very little to do with politics. They have everything to do with the humane values of tradition: love of family, friends, neighbors, and place.

The best educators (and the best educational institutions) will neither embrace nor eschew the electronic technologies that commercial forces wish to prevail in higher education; rather they will assess each one, in light of both its assets and its liabilities, employing those that are superior to other tools, while not employing those that are not.

Summary Filmmaker John de Graaf pulls up a chair to discuss his 1997 documentary Affluenza; a forthcoming project on Arizona politician and JFK/LBJ’s Secretary of...

I enjoy certain utilitarian advantages by heating with wood, but I also prefer the habits of mind—attention, connection, succession, frugality—that my woodpile’s growth and contraction inspires.

For all its current weaknesses, the GND is an effort to “solve for pattern” as Wendell Berry recommends.

Swift knocked out several tracts and sermons on the problems of the Irish economy. And in them he said, in good FPR fashion, several FPRish things—for example, that place matters.

What is the goal of life? Cultural messaging has tricked many of us into thinking it is wealth and status, or career advancement. For us, it is the project of our marriage, our family, friends, and the good we can do in the world.

Free speech is a good thing. Respecting the value of the whole community is a better one.