liberalism 91

So long as gravity obtains, sawing off the branch you’re sitting on is never a good idea.

In his new book, Ralph Nader argues that the Left and the Right should unite against the economic and political establishment in the Center.

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Senator Rand Paul's filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be head of the CIA--something that he did in order to "draw attention to…

Here is an excerpt from my recently published book: The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age. American politics is broken. One of the few things…

The word “culture” readily falls from our lips, but what appears on first glance to be a clear-cut notion becomes much more complex as soon as we attempt to define…

FPR readers will be interested in two new essays in ANAMNESIS. The first, by Professor Jay Langdale, is a fascinating examination of Richard Weaver's analysis of pathologies related to modern…

I was watching a film called Chartres Cathedral and the Geometry of the Sacred the other day. For some reason, the Gothic gargoyles put me in mind of the Republican…

FPR readers are invited to attend the coming Ciceronian Society Conference at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, March 29-31. All attendance to observe the panels is free of charge.…

In a wonderful article published here at FPR a few weeks ago, Jason Peters argued that a proper education ought to provoke a kind of spiritual or intellectual crisis among…

If you think you may legitimately enjoy the physical benefits of a place while dwelling in the airy regions of judgment above it, you’d better think again.

Kearneysville, WV. As this election cycle grinds on, and as Washington prepares for CPAC's 2012 event, each Republican candidate continues to claim that he best represents the conservative ideal. In…

Like other readers here at FPR, and across the web, I have been following the Great Salyer/Carter Debate of 2012 with much interest. I thought Mr. Salyer’s original article was…

I would submit that the new conception of rationality we need is really the old one, the humanist one.

Freedom Requires Restraint

Holland, MI. Around 11:00 Sunday night I received a text from a friend informing me that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US military and intelligence units. I confess…

It is time to reopen the questions about human nature, about human autonomy, about the desirability self-creation. Liberals should, in brief, broaden their horizons to ponder competing views of human…

I hope that a Porcher will react at length to today's dispiriting, but not too surprising, Supreme Court ruling in CLS v. Martinez, which upheld a public institution's -- the…

If you love place, limits, liberty, and think they are words that have meaning, you are probably conservative, and should honor that word also.

A scholar suggests that Phillip Blond's Red Toryism is just another word for conventional conservatism. He may be right about Blond, but he's definitely not about the idea.

If Lasch couldn't express a way for leftists and localists to speak the same language, perhaps no one can.

Ralph Nader recently spoke at a university in the Heart of Dixie. We tried to build some bridges.

Bush's strong effort to restore the freedom of the church took the political side of this freedom for the whole meaning of the tradition. At the same time, his supply-side…

My latest at "The American Conservative"

American Liberalism:  An Interpretation for Our Time by John McGowan.  (Chapel Hill:  The University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Moorpark, CA. If the current administration is liberal, it matters what kind…