Articles 355
Being in ones 20’s and single. Make that 30’s. Make that 40’s.
In 2010, for the first time in our nation’s history, men constituted a minority of the nation’s workforce. Colleges typically boast a 60-40 female-male ratio. Women make up an ever-larger…
If Not Exceptional, How about Unusual
I am loathe to dissent from Mark Mitchell's thoughtful piece on American exceptionalism, true FroPo that I am. And I could simply add a comment to the post along with…
A Sense of Owingness
Like so many others, I spent too much time hoodwinked by the story of liberation, emancipation, and autonomy. What it meant to be free, I supposed, was to be free…
Mafia Among the Mountain Folk, Part II
“I don’t care if you bring the president of Peru and a thousand police—we’ll be carried out dead before you dig here!” Thus was the position of the twenty or…
Vico on Probable Knowledge
I would submit that the new conception of rationality we need is really the old one, the humanist one.
American Exceptionalism or a Modest Republic?
If you are planning to run for president, here’s a word of advice: you must assert regularly and with great conviction your belief in American Exceptionalism. This seems especially true…
Cars, Individualism, and the Paradox of Freedom in a Mass Society
The automobile squared perfectly with a distinctive American ideal of freedom—freedom of mobility.
George F. Will and the Decline of the Tory
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS I don't know how many people in the conservative public sphere read George F. Will closely any longer--maybe lots of them do, but…
October, Momma, and Memory
It is a reminder that our own personal winter is coming. When you are daily reminded of your own bones by pains in your joints, seeing a skeleton dangling from…
There’s No Place Like Home
Absent is the self-examination of the person in the mirror and how we exchange with loved ones around the dinner table. Forgotten is how to live a life more thoughtfully,…
Global Warming, Local Farming, and Naomi Klein: A Trip to the Land Institute
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS A couple of weeks ago some fine intellectuals, political figures, journalists, and activists associated with this blog gathered together to talk about localism,…
Front Porch Republic and the Communion of Saints
By Kim Daniels and Chad C. Pecknold Wendell Berry might well be the patron saint of Front Porch Republic. Or at least –when we attended FPR’s first conference at Mount Saint Mary’s…
My Congressionally-Mandated Constitution Day Lecture
Wherein I respond to the federal mandate to "celebrate" Constitution Day. The text is taken from a lecture I gave at Northwood University, co-sponsored by ISI and the Jack Miller…
On Power
Every fall I teach a course called “Democracy.” One of the books we invariably read is On Power: The Natural History of its Growth by the French philosopher Bertrand de…
A Question for David Brooks
Alexandria, VA On Monday night of this week, New York Times columnist David Brooks spoke at Georgetown University at the invitation of the program that I founded and direct, "The…
The View From Your Front Porch
Emmitsburg, Maryland - You can tell it's a small town when you know both of yesterday's candidates for mayor, and when the mayor-elect's margin of 33 votes constitutes a 20…
FPR Conference: A Fine Day in Emmitsburg
For those of you who were not able to be in Emmitsburg on Saturday, you missed a wonderful day. The rain stopped sometime in the night and the early morning…
When What We Say in Private Goes Public
All religious groups have their internecine squabbles and the places where such fights take place. They used to be confined to magazines and journals, and so only followed by the…
The Real Educational Issue: College Students and a Crisis in Citizenship
The fact that the people who will likely occupy the top of the socio-economic chain—and whose decisions will thus set the terms of most Americans’ existences—have little room for the…
Thoughts on the British Riots
They do not smash shop windows to get their hands on plasma televisions, because their parents' wealth makes such toys readily available to them, but they really have no greater…
On the Use of a Grim Joke and a National Elegy
Until then you’ll welcome into your homes the talking heads who, loving an abstraction, spread a pestilential hatred.
Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising: Ten Years Down the Road
Springsteen’s music does indeed return to the things that are most important in an hour of crisis. But contrary to popular impressions, these things turn out to have very little…
Nine Eleven
Alexandria, VA September 11, 2001, we are frequently told, is the day that "changed everything." For the 3,000 people in New York City and Washington D.C. who were killed on…