The Mosh-Pit of Philosophy, the Pedestal of Science, and a Plate...
Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of addressing the ISI Conference at Taylor University, “Whose Capitalism? Which Free Market? Exploring the Moral Dimensions of...
Going Home
The South, repatriated ex-slave Ned Douglass lectured his Louisiana neighbors in Ernest J. Gaines’s novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is “yours because...
Probable Cause
Attorney John M. Berry Jr. in Kentucky is defending his right to criticize a decision made by the state's Legislative Ethics Commission. Was his language at fault? Or is someone playing politics with bar association rules?
Untaxing the Virtues
What the political mainstream ignores, unsurprisingly, is that any change in how we raise revenue cannot be only about balancing the numbers. It also involves judgements about the texture of society and the virtues that habits of livelihood can inculcate or destroy.
History’s Long Road to Tyranny: Tocqueville and the End of Equality
Devon, PA. I have just finished teaching Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with my freshmen students. In a way I have not witnessed...
Magpie Education for Small-Mouth Bass
We’re like small-mouth bass, and we’ve swallowed the technological treble hook.
Why We Need Jane Austen or How to be a Gentleman...
Austen provides something for which young people—even the jaded ones—secretly long.
Baseball: Official Sport of the Front Porch Republic?
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball” –Jacques Barzun
Grove City, PA. Opening Day, 2011 Dutifully following the links...
Preserving Local Culture
Last Sunday I sat on the church porch, smoked my pipe and listened as some of our musicians played their guitars and mandolins. One...
Requiem for the Chapel on the Farm
They say that funerals are for the living, which of course they are. The deceased, now lifeless, causes us to reflect upon their life...