Front Porch Republic

We know now that much of the Notre Dame Cathedral survived and that it will be rebuilt. But while the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral burned, Americans mourned. They didn’t just follow and repost the news. On social media…

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god— . . . Unhonoured, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting. —T.S. Eliot, Dry Salvages “Salvage” comes from…

“Winning the Peace.” Part reflection on C.S. Lewis’s “Learning in War-Time” and part a response to Alan Jacobs’s The Year of Our Lord 1943, Christopher Beha’s Harper’s essay is an excellent defense of “a society in which we all spend a little less…

Earlier this year, headlines indicated that an unprecedented number of Americans are more than 90 days behind on their car loan payments. Nearly all economists agree that 7 million Americans defaulting on car payments reveals a crack in the façade of…

Confucius deserves a place of honor on the Front Porch because he was History’s keenest observer of the traditions and rituals that make life civilized. He lived in a time of social upheaval when changes in agriculture and communications led…

Conservation is at the heart of conservatism. And the root of our contemporary ecological crisis is a careless, profligate mode of relating to the world; Francis Bacon would be proud of our current disposition as tormentors of nature. Conservatism’s stance…

“A Flourishing Tree.” Tamara Hill Murphy reviews Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace by Christie Purifoy, a book that circles “round and round the subject of finding, losing, and making home.” “Two Tolkiens, One Better World.” Bradley J. Birzer reviews The…

The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by…

We like to flatter ourselves that we live in extraordinary times.  Every four years, for example, we are told that this presidential election is “the most important of our life.”  Those of us who make a living paying attention to public things,…

“The Center Holds.” Nicole M. King reviews The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, 1880-1940, edited by Jon K. Lauck, for the University Bookman. The table of contents includes several Porchers, and King argues that it’s a compelling,…

In his 2017 book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, British commentator David Goodhart seeks to understand the recent populist moments that have shaped the West, from Brexit in the U.K. to the election of…

As Edward Abbey said, “When a man’s best friend is a dog, then that dog has a problem.”