There is nothing morally wrong with being poor, and the stigmatization that affects the poor probably only adds more to their burden. | Continue reading
When we see that beauty and imagination, rightly understood, are intellectual as well as affective, we no longer have to try to bridge some gap between imagination and reality. | Continue reading
Supportive efforts can steer this ingenious workforce toward better stewardship and environmental integrity by reclaiming that awe that life on the land should inspire. | Continue reading
The Cult of Smart is deeply entrenched in most modern systems of public education around the world, and the increasingly clear reality of cognitive and genetic differences between different human beings poses a sharp challenge to liberals whose membership in the Cult makes them w … | Continue reading
We all want students to think critically and to reflect on what they have encountered in the course of their education. In order to do that, however, they must have something to reflect upon. | Continue reading
The pandemic has provided an opportunity to recenter our lives around home and family | Continue reading
"In order to implement vital system updates, you must install the Trans-Mog-Z Facilitator, available at any Big Horizon Automotive Intervention Center. This has been your first notice.” | Continue reading
By deciding to farm, I was unwittingly leaving the progressive dominion of my college’s campus, and sidestepping that of the urban centers to which most of my peers were destined. | Continue reading
The Bruderhof do not blindly follow the status quo but have chosen to organize their life around simplicity, self-sacrifice, and peace. | Continue reading
Hillbilly Elegy is indeed political, but in a deeper sense, entangled as it is in the webs of broken promises and repeated forgiveness. | Continue reading
Jackson, MI. As a college professor and reader of Wendell Berry, I’ve long been concerned about the dominant narrative of “upward (and lateral) mobility” that draws students to higher education. These concerns led Jack Baker and me to write a book that tries to re-imagine these n … | Continue reading
Family-centered trades are not only the most durable throughout history; they are also the ideal context by which parents can pass their values, faith and culture on to the next generation. | Continue reading
Hall’s elegiac poetry and prose teach grim lessons that are worth heeding, but there is also a sort of unsentimental, necessary hope—a hope for continuity and unexpected rebirth, a hope that keeps open a sense of possibility—that shines obscurely beneath their grief. | Continue reading
Perhaps, without silence for a reference point—something out there that reminds us of our place in the big order of things—the masters of information feel free to shade, obscure, or otherwise manipulate their messages. | Continue reading
With the hope that the self-promotion involved doesn’t obviate whatever potential value the words written may convey, here is something I wrote, which I’d like to believe will be of interest to at least some of the Front Porch Republic audience, on the theme of civic friendship a … | Continue reading
I’ll be taking a break from compiling these weekly roundups during the Advent season. See you all after Christmas! “The Trappists’ Coffins.” In a moving essay, Leah Libresco Sargeant writes about the loving care with which a group of Trappist monks craft coffins, many of which ar … | Continue reading
This book at least provides a compelling diagnostic starting point, calling us back to our own networks of dependence and encouraging us to pursue friendship, particularly in the most challenging and vulnerable contexts. | Continue reading
Ordinary and unrefined, Kooser's poems suggest the steady hand of a craftsman who doesn’t need to go looking for the next big thing. | Continue reading
If Dolly Parton left the Smoky Mountains, it seems to have been on a hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell would have recognized. She came back, bearing gifts. | Continue reading
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Gillian Brockell, a talented writer and researcher for The Washington Post‘s history blog Retropolis, interviewed four esteemed historians and scholars of the Constitution, about what, if anything, the Founders had to say about the possibility of a … | Continue reading
“What are Families For?” The new issue of Plough is out, and it looks excellent. I am trying to avoid reading these essays, though, until my print copy arrives in the mail. Waiting won’t be easy. “Tending to the World’s Problems, One City and Town at a Time.” Richard Doster draws … | Continue reading
On the heels of a consequential election, and the accompanying commentary demonstrating the continued pervasiveness of race-thinking, Barzun’s message of honoring each human individual’s value while recognizing our shared common humanity is a timely and timeless message. | Continue reading
The idea that “no arguments or reasons have to be given to enable the experience of beauty” is dearly hopeful in a time when arguments and reasons are largely impotent in reaching people. | Continue reading
Amidst the ongoing chaos and conflict over the 2020 presidential election, and vote tabulating methodologies in particular, let’s remember—and celebrate—that so far it is really only federalism that has won the day. | Continue reading
“How to Protect America From the Next Donald Trump.” While proposals to abolish the Electoral College are popular at the moment, Bryan Garsten recommends strengthening the constitutional culture and local institutions designed to restrain demagogues: The college-educated elite an … | Continue reading
You can leave your corner of the country without escaping it. And these memoirs testify to the importance of bringing something back. | Continue reading
Many religions understand suffering to be laden with the potential for spiritual awakening through a reduction of worldly attachments. But Christianity has a unique understanding of suffering that offers a particular kind of solace. | Continue reading
If you’ve ever wanted to see Jason Peters via a livestream video feed, this is your chance. On Wednesday, November 11, from 1:30 – 2:30 pm (ET), the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture at Seton Hall University is hosting an online conference on the theme of “Driving Wi … | Continue reading
Even in the midst of this sad era of cold, objective ambition, the possibility of grateful participation in the cosmic life of creation remains for each of us. | Continue reading
“Magic in the Dirt.” Julia Turshen visits three small farms to talk with the farmers about their philosophy and the bounty of this strange year. Brian Dawson’s videos and photos compose an immersive account of these three harvests. “Everyone Loses the Culture Wars.” Elizabeth Cor … | Continue reading
In the Wine Press gathers together a host of rough-edged stories of American Christians living in the rise and fall of both Evangelical Catholic and Protestant American Christianity, which arose in the twilight of the Clinton era and peaked during the confluence of religious ferv … | Continue reading
Whatever our color or life or place of origin, we can all sing of our longing for home, our love of the natural world, our delight in children, and our loss. | Continue reading
The liberal arts aren’t for some utilitarian purpose; they’re to free young people to love rightly. | Continue reading
There needs to be a concentration of the real: skills training, middle class and upwardly mobile working class jobs. Replace symbolism with real improvements. | Continue reading
“On Integration.” Jesse McCarthy and Jon Baskin critique the kind of anti-racism made popular by Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. Instead, they follow Harold Cruse in advocating for actions that would strengthen the social fabric of smaller communities: While intellectuals may i … | Continue reading
The same things that happened to the family farms, and to farmers like my father, are now happening to the colleges, and to faculty like me. | Continue reading
Gracy Olmstead is organizing a reading group for people who want to read and discuss Marilynne Robinson’s new novel Jack. Tiffany Kriner, who wrote a review of the novel for FPR, Charlie Clark, and Sarah Clarkson will join Gracy to talk about the novel. You can find more informat … | Continue reading
Dreher, as prophet, gives a dire warning that, if true, means that many Christian dissidents will suffer loss of job, loss of reputation, and loss of social status. Will we listen? Will we heed the warning and prepare to endure such suffering well? Will we commit ourselves to str … | Continue reading
In television and movies, heroes often push away the ones they love, because relationships can be obstacles or endangering for one or both parties. But what if love is not a liability, but a force greater than gravity? | Continue reading
The rancor of this political season provides a diversion from the hard and serious work that must be done to reverse the great unraveling that America is experiencing. | Continue reading
“The Irony of the Google Antitrust Suit.” Franklin Foer writes that the government’s suit against Google is long overdue and marks the end of Big Tech’s unchallenged accumulation of power. “Patrick Deneen: A Primer.” Henry George summarizes Deneen’s books and the trajectory of hi … | Continue reading
The act of hunting makes hunters guilty—and so it makes them moral. | Continue reading
A freezer and pantry full of meat, a season without having to buy any beef: for this a deer died. | Continue reading
Supporting a third party is one way of advocating for long-term, structural change. | Continue reading
In a nutshell, Degrowthers make a bold case that a future worth living is not about doing more with less, it’s about doing “less with less,” and it’s not at all hard to sense an idea whose time has come. | Continue reading
“What if Local and Diverse Is Better Than Networked and Global?” Damien Cave profiles Helena Norberg-Hodge and her work with Local Futures for the New York Times. “Our Fractured Communities: Piecing together American Society in the Wake of Covid–19.” Emma Green writes about how h … | Continue reading
If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far from pointless wheel spinning as are the forms of tenderness we owe our children or grandchildren. | Continue reading
Continuing to base economic and government models around a reductive view of homo economicus will trap us within the inhumane “reality we have made.” | Continue reading