Articles 356
A Genuinely Original Libertarian Argument?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Yesterday evening, I participated in a symposium sponsored in part by Northfield School of the Liberal Arts, a private Christian academy, here in Wichita, KS.…
They Been Here
“You don’t say that,” my grandfather was telling me, gently but with obvious annoyance, as I’d just embarrassed him. We were walking out of a small store on a country…
The Patron Saint of Place
For several decades now, the business plan of fast-food chains has been to build restaurants with a similar design: a drive through around the back and side, an indoor playground…
California Splits
When a "boomer" hits the Pacific Ocean, how does he redefine starting anew? Here are some suggestions from the West Coast.
American Political Praxis
What words best describe present-day Washington politics? The commonplace answer, endlessly repeated by politicians themselves and media observers alike, is this: dysfunction, gridlock, partisanship, and incivility. Yet here’s a far…
What I Saw at the High School Speech Meet
Here in northwest Indiana, I agreed to be a judge for a recent regional speech meet, partly because our middle daughter was a contestant herself and partly because I love…
The Real Social Network
The other night I saw the end of a life well-lived. I didn’t know him; I just saw his funeral. My bus rolled through the dark night I was riding…
A Man’s Home Is His Castle
Hidden Springs Lane. After too long, I finally got around to watching The Castle (1997), a film recommended by FPR’s Jeff Polet. It’s a film you probably haven’t heard of…
Liberty and Circuits of the Sacred
A few days ago was the first time I heard Chinese being spoken with a heavy Indian accent. Given the tenor of our times, one might expect this to have…
Nature, Labor, and a Goat Named Alcibiades
As I cranked the lever I could watch the forest become pasture. I was using a come-along, a simple winch for tightening wire, to run a new fence. As the…
Sometimes a Garden is Just a Garden
To the left of our Southern California driveway is a little plot of land, 400-500 square feet. Some homeowners just pave over a space like this, to add another parking…
Slow Growth and Living Form
Everything seeks its own perfection or completion, and, moreover, seeks this perfection in a way proper to itself. Since both the end sought and the way of seeking are attuned…
In Praise of Mediocrity
Berwyn, PA. Everyone knows G.K. Chesterton's aphorism that, if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. Dappled Things writer Karen Ullo has deepened our understanding of that…
Citizens, Traitors, Misanthropes, and Cosmopolitans
What is it about the modern world that causes us to forget that every choice comes with a cost? The answer cannot be that modern men obsess on wish-fulfillment; ancient…
Can We (not) Talk?
Hillsdale, Michigan. Patrick Deneen posted a vigorous rejoinder to pro-free market critics of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. Deneen’s takedown of Rush Limbaugh got me thinking less about the…
There’s Equality, and There’s Equality
In one of my favorite movies, John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, a family of coal miners is faced with the prospect of lower wages handed out by the…
McClaughry Memoir: The Thousand Points of Light
The following is the final installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen. See the previous chapter here. 8. George H.W. Bush and the Thousand Points of Light Inheriting…
Real Presences
Hidden Springs Lane. What’s the deal with Smart Phones? Go to any public gathering and most of the young people (and some of the not-so-young) are clearly more interested in…
Possessive Individualism: Can We Really Own Ourselves?
The bedrock principle of all Liberalism, whether of the Right or the Left, is Locke’s assertion that “every man has a Property in his own Person.” If is from this…
McClaughry Memoir: The Reagan Years
The following is the fourth installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen. See the previous chapter here. 7. Ronald Reagan Now let’s backtrack to 1966 and follow…
What You Need to Know about Dana Gioia
Dana Gioia has spent his career making metaphors: drawing disparate things together to reveal the breadth and depth of aesthetic experience, but doing so in a way that has frequently…
A Semester of Teaching Sustainability
[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res] The semester has come to an end here at Friends University, and students are leaving campus for their holiday break. Right now I'm grading, and…
The Liberal Arts and the Educational Technology of Language
THE PRESIDENT HAS AN ASSIGNMENT FOR YOU: This is what the bold text on the whitehouse.gov website tells us as it proudly heralds a new national “Student Film Contest”. Next…
