The Stump 341
The Saint of the City Goes Rural: Dorothy Day and the Life of the Land
In the Christian imagination, Dorothy Day looms as one of the 20th century’s great saints. A Communist convert to Christianity and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, her work among…
The Crisis of Love in a Global Age
Any longtime reader of Wendell Berry’s work recognizes two of the many animating forces that give his writing its emotional resonance. These two forces, these two genii loci, revolve around Berry’s approach…
Gender is a Social Construct
In Gender, Illich reveals the depth and scope to which capitalist modernity has unsettled family life and relations between men and women in general.
The American Bookstore: A List
Go here to read the first part of this two-part essay on the American Bookstore. Several hours before a home game at the University of Michigan, the owner of a bookstore on a crowded street teeming with…
The American Bookstore: Prologue
Some months ago I stood in a basement bookstore in suburban Maryland and pondered a relic of the 1960s, an artifact of dubious worth to the casual observer which had…
Institutional Renewal
It is hard to see a silver lining in the abuse scandal of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the scarring crisis has given Pope Francis a rare opportunity to initiate meaningful…
Yellow Vests Run Out of Gas
When asked to share my thoughts on the recent yellow vests protests, I initially demurred, stating that is was simply another case of the French being the French (about benefits)…
Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Politics
Fifty years ago today, Thomas Merton died suddenly during a visit to Thailand. During the past few months, I’ve been thinking about the ways his life and writings speak both…
Can Beauty Bring Us Together?
First, a confession: with the exception, at the age of 18, of a brief flirtation with Barry Goldwater’s presidential candidacy, my politics have leaned decidedly Left. My father, on the other…
When In Gotham . . .
“How does one critique globalism without succumbing to would-be nationalist despots like Bolsonaro or Trump?” This was the earnest and sensible question a friend put to me by email the…
What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think of…
We Need a lot More than Romance
When I came across John Hockenberry’s essay, “Exile,” in the October edition of Harper’s Magazine, I had never heard of him. I still know little about him, though a simple Wikipedia glance…
To Make Housing Affordable, Act Locally
Even if you spend only a fraction of your day monitoring the news, you’ve probably caught wind of the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Disproportionately affecting both the poor and young…
Liberated for What
This piece is adapted slightly from a speech given at Spring Arbor University in Michigan at September's FPR Conference. The sexual revolution as we understand it today was not originally…
Notes on Nike
An honest question: why was Zoolander III: Kendall Jenner and Pepsi Notice Some Serious Issues laughed into shameful corners of the internet immediately while Colin Kaepernick’s recent advertisement with Nike,…
A Primer on Digital Thinking Part 2: Eliminating the Human Element
In Part 1, I outlined the basic difference between counting and measuring and gave some examples of how data is not always objectively derived. Now I want to move the…
The Facebookification of Local Politics: Extending the Wall of the Bathroom Stall
In 2014, Cambridge Analytica used an app called thisisyourdigitallife to surreptitiously obtain data from 50 million Facebook accounts. They then used all of this information in 2016 to help Donald Trump’s…
A Primer on Digital Thinking: Part 1 Counting and Measuring
The basic distinction between digital and analog is that digital means you count something and analog means you measure something. We can easily count discrete objects like apples, oranges, and…
Culture as the Discovery of Meaning
The resurgent debate between Christians that defend classical liberalism and those that critique liberalism tout court has been deeply instructive. This debate, however, threatens to obscure a deeply held alliance and…
Chesterton and Belloc are not Enough
In preparing a new volume of essays titled Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence (1936), Allen Tate and Herbert Agar sought to extend the political argument for agrarianism beyond…
Free Labor: The Liberation Theology of Capitalism
Capitalism as Theology In his seminal work, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Michael Novak provides his readers with a “Theology of Democratic Capitalism.”1 Now, some might find his theology a…
Catastrophe, Technology, Limits, and Localism
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Charles C. Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet, published earlier this year, is a fabulous book. Not a perfect book; sometimes, in order to bulk…
Social Isolation as the Fruit of Liberalism
Loneliness is on the rise. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among young people. Our social media networks may number in the hundreds, even thousands, but it…
A Flexible Disposition
In 2018, to discuss America’s future is to discuss uncertainty. It is true, of course, that talking about the future—a predictive game dependent on chance as much as it is…