Tag: localism

Map-Burning

My point is not to get lost in conventional debate here. But seeking to heal from the culture war, I want to uncover the bodies of my neighbors, which industrial stories kick in the face, deform, and then at election time bury beneath the red-blue map. Aligned with my neighbors, I want to stand in a place off that map, outside those stories.

Conservatives Should Take Another Look at Cohousing

Maybe we can just call it something else, like, “Living with family and friends in a neighborhood designed to encourage the building of social capital, relying on them in real and tangible ways (rather than just manufacturing reasons to occasionally interact with them), and overcoming the isolating dynamics of modern life.”

Hope for a Humane Agricultural Future: A Review of Saying NO...

The ecomodernist approach of Regenesis relies on a mechanistic understanding of humanity. The presumption is that humans are merely fleshy machines that can adapt to flourish in any environment as long as their basic material needs are met. That doesn’t match with most people’s experience of life.

Rooted in Reality

We were all, adults and children alike, doing things that really mattered to the whole free world, and we’d better get on with doing them, every day, all the time. Everyone came from somewhere else and was hustling on their way to somewhere more important. Perhaps we were, all of us, rootless.

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 of town, on a defunct dairy farm surrounded by miles of pasture and scrubby woods. I can barely remember a time before I was allowed to roam over that countryside freely.

Stepford, A Parable of Freedom

In Stepford, everyone has forgotten how to do nothing, as children used to do: the blessed nothing that is full of receptivity and calm, and that is at the heart of the merry activity of play.

Jonathan Swift’s Street Cred

Swift knocked out several tracts and sermons on the problems of the Irish economy. And in them he said, in good FPR fashion, several FPRish things—for example, that place matters.

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 Institute for Abrasive Methods, announcing that he was forming a local chapter.

Conservatism as a Solution to Homelessness

Economists and politicians will accuse me of using a sentimental argument rather than a scientific one. And to some extent my argument should be read in that capacity. However, what makes the point legitimate is that it shows that moral intuitions fade in modern, gigantic “communities."

The Foothills of the Ozarks

Unlike many I grew up with, I’m proud to be an Oklahoman. I’m proud to have a family heritage that is tied to a place and has roots in a community. I’m proud of a community, however flawed, that has an identity and a passion for keeping itself as honest and pure as possible.