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The fundamental reason why American children are not educated properly is simply because the American people do not want their children to be educated properly.

Is being an American worth it?

Their language is hopeful and would be recognizable to any tobacco farmer of the last hundred years. But now they are talking about food.

Gossip, under the right circumstances, acts as a virtue which demonstrates concern and thickens social ties.

The prevailing model of local voting has deep defects, which often work against strong communities. The modern standard is one person, one vote, one place. While this standard is simple,…

It’s been almost exactly a year since the “Miracle at Polihale” occurred, and the answer to the “aloha question” is now clear: we are entering a “new normal.”

My grandma didn’t put up a Christmas tree. She didn’t bake pies. And she didn’t make fudge. Her kitchen was silent. I believe it was her way of mourning, not…

Perhaps out of these fissures and the current populist turmoil, someone might be able to craft a new, more coherent, and more promising Christian and Democratic coalition.

Jesse Walker has written a nice remembrance of the anarchist Colin Ward.

Why not stand on the shoulders of the Kindle?

Hamilton, Ontario. When remembering a family-owned grocery store in rural Virginia, a first image comes to mind, even though I did not actually witness it. This is my boss, a…

Rock Island, IL A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to runners. Roads were not plowed out,…

Often the politics of the local turns on the “who” as much as the “where.” Switzerland showed as much very recently.  The country enjoys some goodwill among the sort of…

Moorpark, CA. We are told to be careful with our words, to be aware of how our words might make other people feel or of how we might be misunderstood. …

Hillsdale, MI. This is a true story.  It happened once upon a time in a place I do not now live. After an arduous campaign I was elected to the…

C.S. Lewis noted that “If you had asked Lazamon or Chaucer ‘Why do you not make up a brand-new story of your own?’ I think they might have replied (in…

Hamilton, Ontario. The other day I was standing in a cavernous mega-chain hardware store looking for gardening supplies. This was not an easy task because the store, which we can…

Philadelphia, PA. If you have read just one of Wendell Berry’s novels or short stories, then you have glimpsed this Kentucky farmer’s love for family, place, and story.   In a contemplative…

Hillsdale, MI. A Mormon friend of mine once argued that the LDS prohibition of alcohol was right and proper not only because it was revealed, but because he had tried…

Rock Island, IL In the early days of FPR, and then again more recently, I was impertinent enough to write disparaging remarks about cell phones, which as everyone knows are…

Claremont, CA.  The most haunting, awful scenes in Thucydides’s history of the Pelopponesian war are those describing the Athenian plague. The plague emerged in the second year of the war,…

In the late 1970s, my grandfather’s older brother, already in his nineties, was pressing his almost deaf ears to a little portable radio still hoping to hear that “the Americans…

Moorpark, CA.  In October of 1997 I attended the Southern Historical Association’s convention in Atlanta because I wanted to hear Paul Conkin’s presidential address, “Hot, Humid, and Sad.”  What I…

Claremont, CA. Tomato, the main character in Erika Lopez’s terrifically kooky Flaming Iguanas, loves the post office. She says, to be precise, that she has a “profound love for the…