Politics & Power 484
Leaving Washington
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…
Christopher Lasch on Presidental Debates
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…
Walter McDougall on American Exceptionalism
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…
Gird Your Loins: It’s an Election
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…
Big Society: Can the Britons “Build That”?
The place is Great Britain; the year is 2011. Years of economic downturn have brought the unsustainability of government-funded social services to a crisis point. Prime Minister David Cameron re-launches…
Romney Photo
I received my official photo of Mitt Romney in the mail today. It came from the Republican National Committee. It shows Governor Romney standing before an unpainted barn, an American…
Tories are Persons, and Persons are Tories (but so too is Labour)
All too many weeks ago, I promised a series of posts on foundations for a new religious right . . . and then I promptly, and happily, disappeared into the…
Firm Identities and Loose Borders
Hillsdale, Michigan. A drive back from New England to the upper mid-West on Tuesday gave me ample time to hear the journalistic accounts of the Supreme Court's decision on Arizona's…
Freedom Is Not The Good
As vice-president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Louisville’s own Archbishop Kurtz has led the way in expressing Church disapproval of the Obama administration's health care plan. According…
Gays Acting Badly in the White House: A Comparative Study
Recently I read Up From Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T. Washington. It is an inspiring story of hard work, perseverance, and clear vision. Washington fought an up hill battle…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A Letter from Old Nick to Candidate Santorum
Sir, I write this letter to protest the public and wholly unwarranted attack on my character you have made during the course of your campaign, and which has only recently…
A Burke for Our Times
Edmund Burke was the greatest master of the English language, not even excepting Shakespeare. It is no doubt a startling claim, but one that I think is highly defensible. The…
The Music of The Spheres and The Terminally Tone-Deaf
I was watching a film called Chartres Cathedral and the Geometry of the Sacred the other day. For some reason, the Gothic gargoyles put me in mind of the Republican…
Patriotism vs. American Exceptionalism
Do you love America? If so, how much? Do you wear an American flag on your lapel (and look askance on those who don’t)? Do you drive only American cars?…
A Burke for Our Times
In a wonderful article published here at FPR a few weeks ago, Jason Peters argued that a proper education ought to provoke a kind of spiritual or intellectual crisis among…
“Freedom or Virtue?” Revisited
About this time last year, Mitch Daniels, the Republican Governor of Indiana, stirred some controversy by calling on conservatives to declare a truce on so-called “social issues” so that they…
