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Articles 356

What Was High School For Anyway?

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Twenty-five years ago today (I think; my memory is far from perfect) I graduated from Central Valley High School in Spokane Valley (then "Veradale"), WA.…
June 12, 2012

You Have Thought Up the Wrong World

In the spring of 1994 my grandmother chose to go off dialysis. Four days later, she was dead. I still remember my parents waking me up in the middle of…
June 11, 2012

Happy Birthday! Hose your Grandkids.

Of all the downsides attendant to turning fifty, none annoys quite so much as receiving membership offers from the AARP. The junk mail invites a response to the effect that…
Jeff Polet
June 6, 2012

Creative Destruction and its Benefits, China-Style

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A few weeks ago I was visited by a fellow Wichita resident who was thinking about getting into politics. We talked for a while about…
June 5, 2012

Flipping the Woolly Bugger

Finding myself 2000 miles from Montana but with a couple of boys who want to go fishing, we ventured into the brown waters of the Shenandoah River. This is, according…
Mark T. Mitchell
June 4, 2012

Why We Consent to the Wholesale Destruction of Good Land

Harrison County, Ohio. After I first moved to Harrison County, my smaller children used to beg that we drive home after excursions via a little-used road that passes through a…

Why I Am Not a Foodie

Guess what's for dinner.
Katherine Dalton
May 24, 2012

The Mishawaka Cruisers

They make their measured circuit along three blocks of neon fast-food chains, the darkened panes of auto dealerships, the Checks-Cashed, and the boarded Dollar Store.

The Hunger Games: Kids Killing Kids

Spring grades are in, so it’s time for a bit of fiction. And since I’ve been hearing plenty of buzz about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (now a major…
Mark T. Mitchell
May 21, 2012

Thoughts towards a New Religious Right

Given my background, beliefs, and practices, I should be an enthusiastic supporter of the religious right—but I can’t do it. I’m religious. I’m conservative. I conclude with the religious right…

Misanthropy or Hymenopteraphilia? E.O. Wilson is Ant(i)-Gracehoper

Devon, PA.  DePaul University in Chicago has many distinguished qualities.  Most striking among them would seem to be that it is nominally a Catholic university, and yet not only are most…

A Sheeshah Pipe for the Porch?

I came to Cairo to get a better sense of the prospects for such a global conversation. If the battle over values is likely to play out globally in this…
May 14, 2012

Getting the Garden Going, One Baby-Step at a Time

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through a…

Multiply Your Associations and be Free

My review of Robert Nisbet's classic The Quest for Community was just published at the On-Line Library of Law and Liberty, whose stated purpose is "to bring together high-caliber conservative…
Mark T. Mitchell
May 7, 2012

Childhood without a Harness

Just a few days back, I arrived home to find a mound of muddy clothes at my front entrance and the sounds of children scampering from bath to bedroom (all…

On Being a Worthy Heir of the Agrarian Contrarians

But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”
Jason Peters
May 2, 2012

American Enthusiasts At The Gates: A Review of D.G. Hart’s From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin

D. G. Hart, From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin: Evangelicals and the Betrayal of American Conservatism (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011). ISB: 978-0-8028-6628-8. 252 Pages. Cost:…

Contraception and Signs of Contradiction: Part II

The Yoke of Nature and Human Vocation.  When it comes to marriage and the having of children we experience these gifts, burdens, and yokes in ways few other aspects of…

Contraception and Signs of Contradiction: Part I

Contraception as Apparent Moral Good.  Most persons who use contraception conceive of it as a moral good.  They see an unruly, pullulating nature directed toward nothing other than its own…

Against Great Books

I make available, below, the text of a lecture I delivered in November, 2011, at University of Texas at Austin. My thanks to the Jefferson Center and Tom and Lorraine…
Patrick Deneen
April 19, 2012

April Advent

While April first brought April Fools’ Day with all of its jokes and gags, the foolish part of the first of April was not its primary value for me.  It…

Gender Matters

In the spring of 2011, articles began popping up about a couple in Toronto who were refusing to publicly reveal the gender of their baby. They named the child “Storm”…
Mark T. Mitchell
April 16, 2012

The Eckhart Tolle of Space

“Many propositions involving temporal concepts which seem obviously and necessarily true are just as necessarily but not obviously true when formulated in terms of spatial relations.” [1] In 2011, the…

In the Creeks and Along the Rails: Tales from Pollock

I was born in Natchitoches, Louisiana, a town known, if it is known at all, for four things:  it is the oldest city in the Louisiana Purchase Territory; the movie…