Articles 356
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…
Rocky and the New Populism
Today we can easily forget how dark things looked in the 1970s and how much people feared that they might be living in the sunset years of our nation and…
Paradise at Ground Zero
What I’m not expecting to hear is anyone asking how it was that about 25,000 people in the towers aided each other in an orderly evacuation, without which the casualty…
The Dangers of Professional Philanthropy
Maybe you are the kind of donor who supports nonprofits in your community. Like many Americans, you give or tithe through your church or temple. You support local human-service organizations…
Red Tory?
Red toryism claims to be re-defining the political landscape, moving beyond the old hegemonic debates as to whether the best kind of government is socialist and statist or liberal and…
The Primary Error of Early English Education
During my brief foray into public education, I taught a group of seventh-graders a typical lesson from a standard middle school literature textbook: we read a chapter from Ramsey Ullman’s…
Interstate Commerce and Arizona Wine
The federal courts' extraordinarily broad interpretation of the Constitution's interstate commerce clause has long posed a problem for localists -- which is to say, for community self-governance. That has never…
You Say Dominion, I Say Kingdom . . .
Let’s call the whole world Christ’s. Ryan Lizza’s piece on Michele Bachmann prompted an avalanche of posts from bloggers and columnists who took issue with effort to link the Congresswoman…