Place. Limits. Liberty.
Join us for FPR’s 2025 Conference on “Work and Leisure”

Articles 355

The Art of Living an Examined Life

If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far…
October 16, 2020

The Sinister Agenda Behind “The Economy”: A review of We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power

Continuing to base economic and government models around a reductive view of homo economicus will trap us within the inhumane “reality we have made.”

Augustine the Agrarian

The world is God’s farm, his flourishing garden. We find ourselves as his workers in his fields, called to cultivate the land and the souls, minds, and bodies of ourselves…

Embattled: The Story of the O’Hanlon Fresco

Mill Valley, CA. As our country struggles to come to terms with its racist past—and present—a controversy surrounding a 1934 mural at the University of Kentucky mirrors the racial tensions…
October 9, 2020

Cultivating the Skills that Freedom Requires in Matthew Crawford’s Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

Human driving requires unending mutual predictions and constant accommodations for each other. It is in such experiences that we end up with something meaningful for life in the physical world…

Braver Angels and Civil Conversation across Partisan Divides

If you resonate with the conversation below and the aims of Braver Angels, consider signing their new letter: What We Will Do to Hold America Together. Boise, ID. In a…
John Murdock
October 5, 2020

Adapt or Die: Kunstler’s Guide to Living in the Long Emergency

James Howard Kunstler follows the first commandment handed down to all of us at birth: “Thou shalt not be dull.”

Heighten the Mystery

With California burning, Antarctica melting, and a death-toll spiraling, we’re left with a looming question: Can a people walking in darkness yet be made to see?
September 30, 2020

Marilynne Robinson’s Jack and the Need to be Forgiven

Much of the novel reads like this sentence—the internal struggle of someone who wants—not forgiveness, nor salvation, really, but rather to not need to be forgiven, to not require salvation…

Fidelity to the Truth in an Illiberal Time, on Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies

I encourage readers to give Dreher a fair hearing and consider the evidence he offers in support of his arguments. The phenomena he cites are real and disquieting, and he…
September 25, 2020

A Bigger Pond

We need to reject the myth of Progress that discourages us from ever being settled and content.

Awakening to Virtue: Confessions of a Well-Read, Unlucky Good Girl

Both Prior and Gibbs agree that ultimately virtue orients us toward one end, to “love God and enjoy Him forever.” Loving God is difficult; it too requires our attention in…
September 23, 2020

From the Village Square to the Global Village—and Back?

At their best, local papers “help provide a common reality and touchstone, a sense of community and of place.”

The Death of a Justice and the Hope of Magnanimous Statesmanship

We do not need reminding of how bitter, partisan, and polarized American politics is today. In order to have a community, people need to hold some things in common. America…
September 19, 2020

Anti-Prophets of Doom: A Review of Michael Shellenberger’s Apocalypse Never

What would be helpful is a book that acknowledge both sets of trends and moves beyond name-calling to begin the hard work of engaging in the tensions and trade-offs between…
John Murdock
September 18, 2020

Learning to Live a Second Life in Two Stories by John Berger and Wendell Berry

There are second chances for some of us, but even second chances bring new losses. For me, it is the grace and hope of these stories and others like them…
September 16, 2020

The Roots of an American Mover

The sins of the movers may be visited upon their children, but it’s possible for the children to suffer well the consequences of their parents’ and grandparents’ decisions.

“Following the Science” in a Polarized Age

We should “follow the science.” But we need to have the intellectual humility—and moral fortitude—to acknowledge the provisional, incremental nature of scientific understanding.

Nihilistic Pieties: On the Souls of Woke Folk

One need not be a Nietzschean to recognize that something is rotten in the states of America and in the West more broadly. It was Nietzsche’s view that the civilization…

Triathlon Training and Place

Training for a triathlon roots you to the environment, economics, and people of a particular place.
September 9, 2020

Brass Spittoon: Bradley Birzer on Christian Humanism

Bradley Birzer on Christian humanism, judging the past, memory, and gratitude.
September 7, 2020

Should We Read the Words of the Unsavory Dead?

Alan Jacobs is right that if we would receive a blessing from the dead, we will have to wrestle with them.
September 4, 2020

Through a Glass Darkly: A Review of Eric O. Jacobsen’s Three Pieces of Glass

The lens through which Eric O. Jacobsen views the three pieces of glass that serve as the basis of his book—the windshield, TVs, and phones—is in need of a good…

Peter Viereck: American Conservatism’s Road Not Traveled

Examining conservative dissenters such as Viereck can enrich our portrait of the conservative movement and shed light on its most recent Trumpian variant.
September 2, 2020