Uncategorized 899
The Excellence (and Implications) of Escaping the Housing Trap
All of this only touches the surface of Escaping the Housing Trap’s arguments and only begins the many productive discussions that should—and hopefully will!—follow in its wake. Buy and read…
What’s In Your Garage?
No home but the Garden was there originally for man, once upon a very long time ago. No garage either was part of life before expulsion from Eden.
President Biden and the Lost Cause
In Lost Cause debates, President Biden should be wary of casting the first stone: his own history demonstrates the complicated relationship the country has with its deadliest war and the…
Public Enemy #1?: Smartphones and a Generation at Risk
Haidt’s book is a tour de force. I can give it no higher praise than to say I wish we could put this book in the hands of every parent,…
“I Wouldn’t Take Nothing for It”: An Appreciation of Love for the Land
“Heeding lessons from farmers who persist in place, we can embrace these virtues. Rather than give up or get out, we can dig in. Rather than go big, we can…
At Home with Dragons
The past is not completely lost to us, and the fascination with fantastic beasts remains.
Monuments to Human Stupidity? A Review of David Betz’s A Guarded Age
The film Patton contains many quotable quotes, some of which cannot be repeated on a family friendly website such as Front Porch (for example, what it might have been like…
Why We Don’t Believe in Free Will
A quarter of a century ago, Wendell Berry wrote, “the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish…
Abandoned Altars
Here, in this shed’s unremarkable pool of silence, I am reminded of other places where silence stretched like an ocean. I happened upon one of those waning shores the previous…
The Timeless Way of Building: A Review
Why is it that we can all say that this building works, that this room is just right, that this town is good and pleasing? Why is it that we…
The Census Taker In a Church Pew, Part 4
Yet our little sister does not play the victim. She presses on, a sufferer who labors as best she can while shadows and thorns press in against her. And she…
Southern Hospitality in the New Machine Age
It’s not perhaps that the world doesn’t need change, but that as anti-Machine author Paul Kingsnorth put it in these pages, “the first work is changing yourself.” We have to…
Two Leftists Walk Into a Pandemic . . .
Not only did the worst consequences of lockdowns occur in the Global South, but lockdowns were pushed on the South from the North, through well-known strongarm tactics of neocolonialism that…
Federalism Frees Us to Flourish
Although it may seem counterintuitive, freedom is actually enhanced, not curtailed, when states have the right to experiment, subject to important federal constitutional limitations, with social and economic polices till…
Small Plastic Gods: On the Tabletop Renaissance
Tabletop games put something in our twitchy, swipe-hungry fingers other than a digital device—a hand of cards, a pair of dice, a plastic Zeus. And since others have put down…
New Beginnings: A Conversation with David Heddendorf about his Novel, The Terra Cotta Camel
David Heddendorf’s novel, The Terra Cotta Camel, is, as the subtitle accurately puts it, about “hope, new beginnings, and Des Moines.” It is about the small, the local, and the…
Socialism, Localism, and the Future of Industrial Agriculture
If I’m honest, I am skeptical that the localist approach I advocate will bring about a quasi-utopian future of widespread flourishing, at least within my lifetime. But at least localism…
The Census Taker in the Pew, Part 3
He does not conflate attendance with salvation or sanctification. But empty pews can neither be saved nor sanctified. They never serve in the nursery or children’s services. They never teach…
For the Love of Books
Out-of-sight, out-of-mind is the quintessential modern American problem-solving strategy, and it sure does have a lot going for it, when it comes to dealing with our problem of stuff—that other…
Narnia Against the Machine: Deep Magic for the Modern Age
Witnessing the ascendancy of the Machine, Lewis understood what was at stake. He watched this ideology sweep across his society and take hold in its schools, and he keenly felt…
From Building Things to Building Institutions
What struck me most in reading the book was the role of risk-taking and personal leadership in an organization’s founding phase, and the necessity of consolidating and institutionalizing its vision,…
Farewell, Peak Literacy, We Hardly Knew You
I’ve also been struck by the number of people in the book-producing-and-selling business who are uninterested in their product. On the retail end, there was the manager of a bookstore…
“The Place of Man Within the Whole”: A (Brief) Theology of Hunting
We’ve recently started the annual tradition (three years going strong!) of holding a wild game dinner with our friends and church community. Each family brings a dish harvested from the…
A Tale of Three “Porchers”
We live in fractured days, lacking in harmony, civility, and comity. “Comity,” an old word for courtesy and kindness, is related etymologically to the Sanskrit word for “smile.” As it…
