Uncategorized 898
The Liberty to Value Common Goods: A Review of The Political Economy of Distributism
While some of Salter’s discussion here is “inside baseball” for economists, what he is trying to achieve is laudable, namely getting distributists to recognize some shortcomings in their theory while…
Apocalypse Now: ChatGTP and the End of Education
The intrusion of AI-generated content into the university sphere is a strange kind of judgement, even an old-style apocalypse, whose real gift is neither its productive power nor the opportunity…
Ambiguity and Belonging in Oklahoma
It is hard to say who this land belongs to, but I know without a doubt that I belonged to it from my earliest youth. I was raised just south…
Christopher Nolan: Anglo-American Apologist
Pattinson captured the appeal of Christopher Nolan’s movies: “You can either really, really dig into it, find so many different threads to pull, or you can appreciate it as a…
Invitations to Dwell
We soaked in the morning and our coffee, aware that we were technically trespassing. But, at the moment, we felt the weight of heritage, a complicated term that outmatched the…
Filling Time Filling Minds
That with which we fill our time, after all, is what ends up filling our minds, hearts, and souls. More than simply responsible scheduling, our very character is on the…
The Deep Spring: A Few Words in Favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
This is the spirituality of a man post-tragedy, post-heroin, post-forty-days-in-the-wilderness. Not the self-pleased, spick-and-span, airbrushed piety we’ve come to expect from presidential candidates these days but practical spirituality.
Christians and the Classics
“Truth, wherever it is found, belongs to God.” This is true, then, when dealing with ancient writings of cultural value and significance. The truth and beauty found therein belong to…
Conservatism in a Liberal Regime
These essays unite history, philosophy, and social commentary to say something about the ebb and flow of ideas which shape post-modern accounts of who we are and where we came…
Do Not Go Gentle Into That AI Night
What starts as a method to optimize reading, exercise, or relationships becomes an end in itself. The native physiological benefit of the morning walk or bed-making is overshadowed by appeasing…
A Tribute to John McClaughry
When a top campaign staffer complained to Mr. Percy that John could be abrasive, John posted on the office bulletin board a brochure from an actual trade group, the National…
A Recipe for a Festival
They know their neighbors; and their neighbors, after all, are probably their kinsmen too, though it might take a careful genealogist to trace two neighboring streams back to their originating…
The Census Taker In the Church Pew, Part 2
At the time of this writing, W. and D., with W. staying at D.’s side, remain faithful attenders of our church’s worship services and Bible studies. How long will this…
Returning to the Love of the Book
Hooten Wilson draws on theological as well as literary works to demonstrate various approaches to a text, leading to the contemplative mode, which she asserts should be “the end of…
The Poetics of Family Life
Taken alone, the tactical state of childhood itself mounts a magnificent resistance to the rigidity of the adult world. But children do not live in a vacuum: they live in…
Advisor Wanting: The Absence of Moral Limits in Lady Macbeth
Our best ally should not be a man or woman who lacks the aptitude to discern right from wrong...one should not draw unto himself or herself a companion like Lady…
Vaya con Dios: Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023)
Somewhat surprisingly, this is also McCarthy at his most delighted at everyday joys. There are many tender passages of drinking coffee in porcelain cups in diners, eating tortillas and beans…
Cornmeal and Butter: On the Significance of Temperature
At all hours of the day and night in the Mannon house, you’ll find butter in its designated dish on the dinner table and cornmeal in the fridge. I hold…
The Joyful Christian Nationalist: How Stephen Leacock Loved His Home by Resisting the World
Undergirding Leacock's work was not a desire to restore a previous version of Canada, but to preserve the gifts God had given: the best traditions of the past, the communities…
From Technological Nostalgia to Technological Faithfulness
I bought myself an iPad in August 2016, and to say that it changed my life would be only a slight overstatement. For several years I had been experiencing increasingly…
“Magically Turning White”: A Family Story of Slavery, Racism, and Redemption
Mark Clavier describes coming to terms with the fact that he is a white Southerner descended from enslaved Africans who subsequently became slave-owners. Reflecting on an ancestry containing triumph and…
Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold: Micturition and Its Discontents
Why have we persisted in peeing outdoors well after the advent of outhouses and toilets?
Dying Properly—like a Dumb Ass (A Dispatch)
Little do I know that in a few days I will have died properly: by explosion.
Still Singin’
That this country boasts something called “The Great American Songbook” is one of the best jokes around. The Great American Songbook? Our songs—let alone songbooks—don’t stick around long enough to…
