liberty 33
“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the Countryside
“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house. I got up from the wooden bench on which…
Brave New World Reconsidered: A Tale of Two Gnosticisms
Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning – an imaginative rendering of our…
The Emperor’s Old Clothes
I wonder whether anyone else finds it, if not quite ominous, at least suggestive, that the National Constitution Center is now hosting a traveling show on the Emperor Napoleon. The…
Modernity, Fecundity, and Being a Competent Geek
Wichita, KS. Not too long ago, I asked my readers at my main blog just what sort of geek I should be. (The answer, in case it wasn't apparent at…
Tocqueville’s Diagnosis
RINGOES, NJ As brilliant minds, armed with apparently endless supplies of money, thrash about Washington desperately attempting to fix what they have broken, it might be useful to step back…
The (“Post-“) Modern Cave: An Allegory of the University
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Imagine human beings brought up from childhood in a cave, bound fast with their heads all facing one direction. On the wall before them they see only…
Food and Freedom
RINGOES, NJ. Isn’t it interesting how quickly speculation becomes conventional wisdom? Back in the fall, when we began to hear rumblings of economic catastrophe, things were a bit vague. Most…
Prosperity, Myth and Liberty
E.D. Kain identifies a paradox in modern American conservatism that will be familiar to students of George Grant. Forty years ago, Grant wrote this in his essay, "In Defence of…
Freedom Among Themselves
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. E.D. Kain had a fine quote from Wendell Berry that provides a good definition of community to start any discussion of place and limits: A community is the mental…