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Articles 356

The Ron Paul Effect

What I failed to realize was that the conservatism I was shifting away from was not a historical conservatism at all—rather, it was a distinctly 2000s neoconservatism that I had…

Returning to the Love of the Book

Hooten Wilson draws on theological as well as literary works to demonstrate various approaches to a text, leading to the contemplative mode, which she asserts should be “the end of…

The Poetics of Family Life

Taken alone, the tactical state of childhood itself mounts a magnificent resistance to the rigidity of the adult world. But children do not live in a vacuum: they live in…
June 21, 2023

Advisor Wanting: The Absence of Moral Limits in Lady Macbeth

Our best ally should not be a man or woman who lacks the aptitude to discern right from wrong...one should not draw unto himself or herself a companion like Lady…

Conservatism as a Solution to Homelessness

Economists and politicians will accuse me of using a sentimental argument rather than a scientific one. And to some extent my argument should be read in that capacity. However, what…

Vaya con Dios: Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023)

Somewhat surprisingly, this is also McCarthy at his most delighted at everyday joys. There are many tender passages of drinking coffee in porcelain cups in diners, eating tortillas and beans…

The Answer is Division

There's no place that division would not make things better. I don't say utopian, just better.

The Foothills of the Ozarks

Unlike many I grew up with, I’m proud to be an Oklahoman. I’m proud to have a family heritage that is tied to a place and has roots in a…

Things I Learned in Intermediate Greek Class

Reading ancient languages requires slow and careful thinking and processing of a sort that we do not normally utilize in our pressure-cooker fast-consumer world.

Ecological Curiosity for Faithful Feeling of Place: Mountain Nature and Strangers in High Places

So too does my eye for the Creator veiled and present in His evidence. Without them, how could I recognize what was first and larger in what I sense of…

What’s the Beef with Cows?

Cows do not kill people; people kill people. Especially people who claim cows are the problem. Cows are key players in solving the problems created by industrial agriculture.

Is Regime Change too Radical? Or too Conservative?

What is more radical, and more conservative, than to cast the ring into the fire? That would be a real “regime change,” would it not?

Putting the Demos on a Pedestal

Why Liberalism Failed was a good book, but Regime Change is a better one, and I think will be recognized as such—as well as one that will gain notoriety in…

Whither Brexit?

Debates over the fate of the nation-state are largely driven by the fundamental problem of how we respond to guilt in a post-Christian age. Our politics will thus reflect the…
Jeff Polet
June 5, 2023

Spider-Man Has Lost His Place

Spider-Man now devalues human-scale kindness and decency by questing in the multiverse, and ideological rigidity and swift judgment have replaced his former nuance and virtue-seeking.

What Tocqueville Couldn’t See

Faith and reason aren’t opposed any more than freedom (the rallying cry of Patriots) and distributive justice (the rallying cry of social justice warriors) are opposed!

There’s No More Room: Toward an Anarcho-Pastoralism

What I’ve just attempted to describe are the joys of the edge. Freedom, I believe, has a limited half-life when it’s in the heart of civilization. Anarcho-pastoralism means that there’s…

Blessings to Impart

What’s stopping you from blessing your yard, neighbors, and neighborhood, your watershed, the land you drive over everyday? Bless the world, literally, and with your being. Offer it up to…

A Twenty-First Century Agronomic University: The Maurin Academy

We use the experience of the JPII farm not only to learn and improve over time but to inform our audience of the realities and pitfalls of attempting this way…

A.I. Doesn’t Cause Cheating. Fear Does.

Front Royal, VA. How do you catch a cheater? This is the question that is plaguing the minds of college and high school faculty across the country this spring. No…

A Local Look at the Meanings of the Founding: A Review of The Nation that Never Was

After excluding less plausible interpretations like Roosevelt’s, I think the Old Testamentish version of the Founding is the most defensible: the Founders left us some good principles which later were…

A Beautiful Farm?

These benefits and this healing can only begin to happen when beauty is allowed once again on the farm. One cannot truly have a good farm without it.

Observing Limits to Re-enchant a Mute World: A Review of The Uncontrollability of the World

Even Rosa the respectable sociologist entertains the possibility that if we relearned how to listen, the mountains might speak. Perhaps they too have their spirits, mute but waiting.

Are Americans Better Off?

Let’s just say you’d better have great discipline and a very rich interior life if you expect to be happy amid great affluence. If this is true of individuals, that…
May 17, 2023