Articles 356

Notre Dame, IN. It was on the virtual “pages” of the Front Porch Republic that I announced last February that I was leaving Georgetown University, in Washington D.C., to accept a…

In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist Sigrid Undset fled to the countryside…

The most important political conversation Americans need to have is about how the old conversations no longer matter. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party—called the one-and-a-half party system by…

This excerpt is taken from Eric Miller's new book: Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings. The Penn State University geographer Wilbur Zelinsky believes something exists called the “Pennsylvania Culture…

The following is an excerpt from a new book by Eric Miller: Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings. Of all the distinctive raiment with which Americans garb themselves,…

As the first of the presidential debates approaches, it is helpful (though not necessarily heartening) to turn to Christopher Lasch, whose understanding of American democracy was profound. The following paragraphs…

“It sure is hard to have people over to dinner these days,” the food writer lamented, at a talk I attended the other week. She told a sorry tale of…

Hidden Springs, VA.Last week the Washington Post ran a story titled “Rethinking the Classroom: Obama’s Overhaul of Public Education.” The piece described the various ways Obama has asserted himself into…

Maybe your neighborhood doesn’t have front porches or sidewalks or a farmer’s market or anywhere to shop except Target. Maybe despite the supposed modern hegemony of freedom and mobility, you…

Damn the lights, unnatural, bright, coiled, spewing white 15 watts.   Damn the halls, with their smooth vinyl, soaked in bleach, the stench of sterile rising like road kill on…

Last evening I had the joy of taking a dozen-plus college students to the Abbey of the Genesee for the first of this year’s “Newman Community Book Discussion with Monks.” The…

In the afterglow of last weekend's gathering of Porchers, which featured a panel on American exceptionalism, a piece by Walter McDougall over at the Foreign Policy Research Institute's website comes…

One of the most memorable passages in the Iliad occurs in Book 22, during the climactic scene when Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy.  As Achilles closes…

This excerpt is the second in a three-part series from Eric Jacobsen’s book, The Space Between. Read Part I here.  Town Fabric and Placemaking The built environment plays an important…

Place and Space Place, in contrast to space, is a context-specific, meaning-rich concept. Although many use the two words interchangeably, a fairly clean distinction can be made between them. Space…

Hidden Springs, VA. In two recent pieces, I argued that 1) the language of “culture war” is not helpful and should be discarded, and 2) that to the extent that…

If Virginia is for lovers (what an odd campaign that was), Michigan should be for duffers. I understand why some FroPo's may object to the sport alleged to spoil a…

Olathe, Kansas -- On Saturday I looked back from my front porch, my walk having been cut short by a soft rain. As you can see, my grass and that…

Part II in an ongoing series, Localism and the Universal Church.  Read Part I here. Where the traditionalist position I have sketched appears weakest is precisely where it speaks most…

In his estimable history of distributism and its major figures, Jobs of Our Own, Australian economist and former MP Race Matthews records an account of the distinctive atmosphere of the…

Part I in an ongoing series, Localism and the Universal Church. Devon, PA.  Several times during the last couple years, the FPR comment boxes have received protests against the supposed “placelessness”…

Claremont, CA.  In Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, the hero Howard Roark violently rapes a woman named Dominique, forcing her into submission “like a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession” of a…

The pleasures of a partial self-sufficiency.

Holland, MI On Inauguration Day 2009 various organizations at my college held a celebration to mark the inauguration of America’s first African-American president. Large TV screens were set up around…