Do real things together. Celebrate. Take delight in the world—together. Don’t feel compelled to broadcast your views about the dangers of technology. Let your life speak, but be prepared to give an account of why you’re living the way you are. | Continue reading
“What is Time For?” In this excerpt from The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education, Zena Hitz queries the way in which we spend our time. As she points out, the problem of not making enough time for the most important endeavors is a perennial human problem: “Augusti … | Continue reading
By now, no one should be shocked when a conservative says something unkind about the free market. Still, those unfamiliar with any right-wing tradition predating Reagan react to someone like JD Vance as if he were a monstrous novelty. How could one favor raising corporate tax rat … | Continue reading
The “freedom to walk away” from at-will employment seems, in many cases, to be the “freedom” to launch yourself into the unsteady winds of “joblessness and financial misery,” particularly if your employment contract requires resolution of disputes through expensive and time-inten … | Continue reading
Perhaps people defended the liberal arts to me, and I was too dense to hear, but I truly cannot remember anyone ever setting out a vision for the liberal arts | Continue reading
“The Liberating Arts Book Launch.” If you’ll be in NYC this September 28th, join us for a panel discussion and book launch event for a book I co-edited on the enduring relevance of a liberal arts education. Roosevelt Montás will be talking with Zena Hitz, Jonathan Tran, and Jessi … | Continue reading
Allen notes that in ancient political thought, “the people” or demos referred not to the whole but to one part of the whole political community, namely the poor. The question of regime analysis or prescription was the question of which part actually ruled or ought to rule on beha … | Continue reading
One easy solution is the crockpot. Why? You can throw in some basic ingredients in the morning before work or school, and then when you get home in the evening, you have a hot meal waiting. Bonus: the house will smell really good when you walk in. What’s not to love? | Continue reading
“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” – James 1:18 In Natality, Jennifer Banks—senior executive editor at Yale University Press— embarks on a journey to understand natality and to propose “a philosoph … | Continue reading
Vermont dumps almost all of its own garbage into Mount Casella, though it exports some to New Hampshire and New York. Its own consumption of goods–often including unhealthy processed foods, shipped huge distances–is culturally indistinguishable from the flow of garbage trucked ou … | Continue reading
“Rage against the Baseball Machine.” Bill Kauffman wasn’t keen on watching a baseball game where balls and strikes were determined by a machine: “We are told by ABS advocates that transferring the most significant function of an umpire from human beings to a machine will ensure u … | Continue reading
It is profoundly strange to suggest (as Shiny Happy People implicitly does) that there is something strange and nefarious about people who believe in their principles wanting to see them become a reality in the public square. | Continue reading
As evening arrives, you put on warmer clothes and make a campfire, arguing over which is the best design method, the teepee or the log cabin. Once it gets going, you sit with your loved ones in a circle around the fire and just stare at it uncontrollably. You are mesmerized and i … | Continue reading
In a perfect world, our children would romp out the door after completing their chores and their schoolwork (we homeschool) and knock politely at their best friend’s door, who lived just around the corner in our quiet, speeding-car-free neighborhood, and spend a couple of hours e … | Continue reading
We are not meant to die alone in nursing homes and hospitals, with gray faces, morphine drips, and flickering television screens. We are meant to live, die, and live eternally surrounded by a community of love. Creating that community of love, especially within one’s family, take … | Continue reading
Folks reading this site might, and there is a minority of the public that spends the time and money to grow produce or seek out good, local farms. But most people only really think about food when they can’t get it or when the grocery bill increases. A big reason we have the syst … | Continue reading
Turns out, there are other Mandalorians, and our hero is a traditionalist. After this encounter, some speculated that Mando would go “the way of the creedless Unitarianians, steadily shedding his beliefs one by one.” | Continue reading
To appeal to personal rights seems to be an appeal to the highest value, and it is no wonder that people are feeling spiritually and socially starved. No one in earlier times would have considered his rights apart from his duties and responsibilities, or her privileges apart from … | Continue reading
While some of Salter’s discussion here is “inside baseball” for economists, what he is trying to achieve is laudable, namely getting distributists to recognize some shortcomings in their theory while encouraging economists to take distributism more seriously as a way of pursuing … | Continue reading
My guest is Dale Ahlquist who has made the study and promotion of the works and ideas of G.K. Chesterton his life’s work. We preview the upcoming Chesterton Society Conference, the growth of the Chesterton School network, as well as the status of the campaign to have G.K. Chester … | Continue reading
The intrusion of AI-generated content into the university sphere is a strange kind of judgement, even an old-style apocalypse, whose real gift is neither its productive power nor the opportunity it provides to declare one’s Luddite bona fides. ChatGPT is, both more simply and mor … | Continue reading
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 roa … | Continue reading
Pattinson captured the appeal of Christopher Nolan’s movies: “You can either really, really dig into it, find so many different threads to pull, or you can appreciate it as a big, massive adventure movie, and you don’t even need to know what’s happening that much.” | Continue reading
We soaked in the morning and our coffee, aware that we were technically trespassing. But, at the moment, we felt the weight of heritage, a complicated term that outmatched the real-estate deeds housed in Pulaski county courthouse. | Continue reading
That with which we fill our time, after all, is what ends up filling our minds, hearts, and souls. More than simply responsible scheduling, our very character is on the line, and that has consequences far beyond the present. | Continue reading
This is the spirituality of a man post-tragedy, post-heroin, post-forty-days-in-the-wilderness. Not the self-pleased, spick-and-span, airbrushed piety we’ve come to expect from presidential candidates these days but practical spirituality. | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
“Truth, wherever it is found, belongs to God.” This is true, then, when dealing with ancient writings of cultural value and significance. The truth and beauty found therein belong to God, and as children of God, we need not fear what properly belongs to the Father. | Continue reading
These essays unite history, philosophy, and social commentary to say something about the ebb and flow of ideas which shape post-modern accounts of who we are and where we came from. | Continue reading
However, my role that day was not to frighten but inspire, as all the other mentors would do. My message was simple: I wanted these energetic students to know that they were created to be great and to do great things. | Continue reading
Once upon a time, different businesses and professions in a town would have their own baseball teams and play each other. At a minimum, we could do more to bring back church softball leagues. | Continue reading
What starts as a method to optimize reading, exercise, or relationships becomes an end in itself. The native physiological benefit of the morning walk or bed-making is overshadowed by appeasing the voice of Andrew Huberman or Jordan Peterson. | Continue reading
But if our souls are eternal, why do we not then spend more time with things that habituate us to eternity? If our days are short, and the “days are evil,” as St. Paul writes, why do we spend so much time with things that are bad for our souls? | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
This will be the last Water Dipper for a few weeks. I’ll be taking some time off from email and the Internet. I plan to resume the Water Dipper in August, after, I hope, completing the penultimate chapter of my current book project. FPR will continue publishing new essays while I … | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading
They know their neighbors; and their neighbors, after all, are probably their kinsmen too, though it might take a careful genealogist to trace two neighboring streams back to their originating source. | Continue reading
At the time of this writing, W. and D., with W. staying at D.’s side, remain faithful attenders of our church’s worship services and Bible studies. How long will this hold? The answer is unknown, but I am watching. | Continue reading
What I failed to realize was that the conservatism I was shifting away from was not a historical conservatism at all—rather, it was a distinctly 2000s neoconservatism that I had assumed was the only flavor. | Continue reading
“Barbara Kingsolver: ‘Rural people are so angry they want to blow up the system.’” Lisa Allardice talks with Barbara Kingsolver about her new novel: “Raised in Kentucky, Kingsolver describes herself as ‘Appalachian, through and through.’ This DNA is stamped on every one of the 55 … | Continue reading
Hooten Wilson draws on theological as well as literary works to demonstrate various approaches to a text, leading to the contemplative mode, which she asserts should be “the end of all our reading.” | Continue reading
Taken alone, the tactical state of childhood itself mounts a magnificent resistance to the rigidity of the adult world. But children do not live in a vacuum: they live in homes; they form the family | Continue reading
Our best ally should not be a man or woman who lacks the aptitude to discern right from wrong...one should not draw unto himself or herself a companion like Lady Macbeth, for Lady Macbeth does not exercise virtue. | Continue reading
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 “commun … | Continue reading
“Piety, Technology, and Tradition.” Jon Askonas responds to a critique from Alan Jacobs about the difficulty of conserving traditions in our current technological environment: “I can hand down my faith to my son, but I can’t hand down a world where pornography is not instantly av … | Continue reading
Somewhat surprisingly, this is also McCarthy at his most delighted at everyday joys. There are many tender passages of drinking coffee in porcelain cups in diners, eating tortillas and beans on stops in the desert, working with cowboys at small jobs on ranches, and companionship … | Continue reading
There's no place that division would not make things better. I don't say utopian, just better. | Continue reading
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. | Continue reading