Articles 356
How Bonds Really Did It
With the Barry Bonds’s trial ending with a slap on the wrist for the lesser charge against him and a mistrial on the greater charges, it is time to divulge…
The Mosh-Pit of Philosophy, the Pedestal of Science, and a Plate of Green Beans
Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of addressing the ISI Conference at Taylor University, “Whose Capitalism? Which Free Market? Exploring the Moral Dimensions of the Market.” My message to the…
Going Home
The South, repatriated ex-slave Ned Douglass lectured his Louisiana neighbors in Ernest J. Gaines’s novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is “yours because your people’s bones lays in it;…
Probable Cause
Attorney John M. Berry Jr. in Kentucky is defending his right to criticize a decision made by the state's Legislative Ethics Commission. Was his language at fault? Or is someone…
Untaxing the Virtues
What the political mainstream ignores, unsurprisingly, is that any change in how we raise revenue cannot be only about balancing the numbers. It also involves judgements about the texture of…
History’s Long Road to Tyranny: Tocqueville and the End of Equality
Devon, PA. I have just finished teaching Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with my freshmen students. In a way I have not witnessed before, they were compelled by his…
Magpie Education for Small-Mouth Bass
We’re like small-mouth bass, and we’ve swallowed the technological treble hook.
Why We Need Jane Austen or How to be a Gentleman with Examples Good and Bad
Austen provides something for which young people—even the jaded ones—secretly long.
Baseball: Official Sport of the Front Porch Republic?
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball” –Jacques Barzun Grove City, PA. Opening Day, 2011 Dutifully following the links provided by FPR’s editors, I…
Preserving Local Culture
Last Sunday I sat on the church porch, smoked my pipe and listened as some of our musicians played their guitars and mandolins. One of the songs we sang…
Requiem for the Chapel on the Farm
They say that funerals are for the living, which of course they are. The deceased, now lifeless, causes us to reflect upon their life as well as our own which…
A City upon a Hill
Conservatives are awfully fond of referring to America as a “city upon a hill;” it would be a wonderful thing if they actually made some attempt to understand what that…
Egypt, Tunisia, and the Failure of Neoclassical Economic Theory
The regime changes in Egypt and Tunisia have been hailed as victories for democracy, as proof of the liberalizing power of social networking media, as testimony to the power of…
A Tip of the Hat to Courtesy
Grand Rapids, MI. Strange things happen in the checkout lane. The elderly man at the head of the line was pausing to look at something in his hand. No, not…
Wendell Berry and the New Urbanism: Agrarian Remedies, Urban Prospects
The problem is a result of the underlying specialization—not of people but of places—for what could be more specialized than designing a town according to discrete zones designated by use?
The New Lisbon?
In the wake of a series of catastrophes in the course of recent years - the financial crisis and the Great Recession; the Gulf oil "spill" as well as a…
On Competitiveness
“Competitiveness” is the new “proactive” – the word, to paraphrase The Simpsons, that dumb people are using to sound important. Or, more precisely, it’s the word that ostensibly smart people…
Bradley Manning, and my Biggest Disappointment in Obama (Yet)
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Let me make two things clear: first, all things considered, I still think Barack Obama has been, and remains, a pretty decent president--certainly…
California Splitter
These days I care more about the results of local sporting events than I do national or out-of-state elections, but I was pleased that Golden Staters put Jerry Brown back…
Whom You Have Sex With is My Business
BYU’s suspension of forward Brandon Davies for having sex with his girlfriend has divided the sports blogosphere between those who applaud the University for upholding its honor code and those…
Theses on Unions, Wisconsin, and Other Things
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS So last night, the Republicans in the Wisconsin state senate passed the bill which Governor Scott Walker has made the cornerstone of his…
The Song of Taillefer
Somerset, NJ. Legend has it that on the field of Hastings, as the forces of the Conqueror ascended a hill to engage the exhausted army of Harold II, a certain…
A Tale of One City
It was the best of times; It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens begins A Tale of Two Cities with a paradox, but one that is easily resolved because…
Are You Free?
What would Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson say if they were transported to our day?