Articles 356
Good Night, Sweet Babe Magnet
It's as if two men are talking fondly about a woman both of them were once married to.
As North Korea Goes Nuclear Far East Ambassadors Must Speak Up
I lived much of my adult life under Terry Branstad’s multiple tenures as governor of Iowa, and I think he did a “pretty fair job,” as farm families are wont…
And Then Came the Chickens, Part Two: A Dispatch from Dumb-Ass Acres
“Bawk-bawk be-gehk!” she cries, and I know just where she’s coming from.
Breaking Through the Screen Door: The Jayhawks’ Hollywood Town Hall, Twenty-Five Years Later
A couple of years ago my wife had a minor accident, the kind that results in an older car being mysteriously “totaled.” Before the man came to ferry our 2005…
To Bail or not to Bail
Recently David Brooks posted a New York Times op-ed lamenting an increase in “bailing,” which he defines as “flaking” on social commitments. The title of the article was “The…
The Dryers are Coming! The Dryers are Coming!
South Korea lives on the cutting edge of technology -- just ask the young smart-phone zombies that slowly roam the campus where I teach. On second thought, better to send…
Mr. Sillypants Goes to Washington
In a folder of papers at my desk there are reminders of things to do sometime, although they aren’t urgent. Waiting to be filed is a copy of Billy Collin’s…
On Place, Permanence, and Microbrews
“It is a pleasure to carry out one’s duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one’s name on it certifying,…
And Then Came The Chickens—After the Bobcat: A Dispatch
Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.
A Place Called Home – Even When You’re Young
Since posting "A Place Called Home" we have learned of the passing of Otto Warmbier. Just as home is the place where absence is felt most durably, so home is…
Trump: America’s Father-in-Chief?
Donald Trump has been called many things in the press in the first six months of his presidency, yet the media have thus far missed his most overlooked calling card:…
On Father’s Day (With an Apostrophe)
Grand Rapids, MI Father’s Day is around the corner. I had to look up the term to see if it has an apostrophe. It does, and it has had since…
Peter Lawler: R.I.P.
Peter Augustine Lawler passed away on Tuesday, leaving a significant void not only in the lives of his friends, family, and students, but in the intellectual life of American conservatism…
Shared Governance and Mandatory Training: The New Incoherence
So long as gravity obtains, sawing off the branch you’re sitting on is never a good idea.
Avoiding the Hive
New Directions for Catholic Social and Political Research: Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, Guido Preparata, (ed.) Palgrave MacMillan, 319 pages The future is notoriously uncertain but nonetheless, legion have been the prognostications…
Bruce Langhorne, RIP
Bruce Langhorne, best known as the inspiration for Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" but best loved (by me, anyway) for his extraordinary score for Peter Fonda's 1971 acid Western The…
Politics as Religion: A Brief Assay Essayed after Midnight
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; / Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
What the Smartphone is Good For (Besides Nothing)
The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect.
On Dreher’s Benedict Option, the Christians and Localists Who Can Live It, and the Ones Who Can’t
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Rod Dreher and I aren't close friends, but like many Front Porch Regulars, I've been blessed with the opportunity to associate with and learn from…
Two Last Suppers and Ordinary Greatness: A Double Eulogy
What are the compensations on the downhill side of life?
David Bosworth on his New Book, Conscientious Thinking: Making Sense in an Age of Idiot Savants
No one who cares about the condition of our culture can afford to ignore Conscientious Thinking. --Jackson Lears, editor, Raritan
From the Nut House (And Into the Nut House) the Bar Jester Returns!
They should be required to share a double bed and commit adultery with each other every night—twice if possible.