“The New Colonialist Food Economy.” If you don’t want your blood to boil, then don’t read Alexander Zaitchik’s essay on the colonial efforts of NGOs and seed corporations to take over the seed market in Africa and Central America: “the new generation of agricultural reforms seeks … | Continue reading
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 overc … | Continue reading
It is not solely (or perhaps even primarily) about there being more hours of work and therefore less time for reading. It is about the possibility of work hovering over every moment of supposed leisure. For me, that is the fundamental distraction, not TikTok. So yes, smartphones … | Continue reading
A good number of Christian scholars draw first and foremost on Thomas Aquinas for their accounts of beauty. Desmond, though he’s aware of and engages with the Thomistic tradition, has spent much of his career interacting with the thought of Hegel, perhaps most directly, as it per … | Continue reading
Daytripper reminds people that you don’t have to go far to see something new. Even small towns have a special local food or watering hole. Every place has history. And it’s fun to swim in a new lake. It’s good to kayak a new river or hike a new hill. Wherever you are, your own st … | Continue reading
The newest book from FPR Books is Brian Miller’s Kayaking with Lambs. Enjoy this excerpt, and then pick up a copy of the book. This life is not what was expected when first I took up farming. Even today it is hard to conjure the farmer I envisioned two decades ago. No doubt he wa … | Continue reading
Barba-Kay argues that we tend to resolve our cognitive dissonance by outsourcing all the choices that do matter and consoling ourselves with a plethora of choices that don't. | Continue reading
The aim is to get young people, of all backgrounds and races, on their feet with as little fuss and expense as we can, regardless of whether their families can afford the usurious colleges, and by doing so, to empower families that are richer in brains and in common moral virtues … | Continue reading
The liberty and justice which republics are erected to safeguard requires, as Milton and the Founders knew, a moral, virtuous, and religious citizenry. Without this moral and virtuous spirit, the citizenry is slothful and servile. Despotism takes hold once the bulwark of liberty … | Continue reading
Bill Kauffman, author of multiple books including Poetry Night at the Ballpark and long the closing speaker at FPR conferences, talks about the origins of Front Porch Republic and his unique life of letters. Host: John Murdock Guest: Bill Kauffman Highlights 1:30 De … | Continue reading
I’ll be out of town the second half of next week for a book launch event in NYC. Since I’ll be on the road, I probably won’t have a chance to post a Water Dipper next weekend, but I’ll plan to be back the following week. “I’ve Always Loved Tech. Now, I’m a Luddite. You […] | Continue reading
This trend is peaking in a small rectangle, the smartphone. As Marc Barnes observes, the smartphone has replaced the TV. The smartphone is portable and personal and has enticed us to enjoy our shows in our private rooms. The ubiquity of the smartphone is an artifact of our own lo … | Continue reading
There are things that a full room can do for us. It can reassure us. It can offer comfort. It can offer luxury and pleasant distractions. A full room can be cozy and a crowded refrigerator reassuring. A room can be full of company. We can be and feel less alone. A full room can t … | Continue reading
It is, I realized, handy to have a proper template handy, ready to use, should my fears come true, and I discover that I really did forget to answer an email for a few months, and then need to send a very thorough and sincere apology. In fact, it is possible that such an email is … | Continue reading
While many recognize the limits of human language and the ways it has sometimes been used to harm, they see language as capable of naming (or, at least, gesturing toward) the dance of matter and spirit that constitutes human existence. | Continue reading
“Inis Cealtra.” Paul Kingsnorth explains—sort of—what he’ll be writing about for the foreseeable future. What makes it challenging to explain is that he’s after something beyond words: “The silence of the hermit, the reality of the well: the faith that is rooted in the rocks, and … | Continue reading
Babbitt and More advocated the study of the humanities as a tool for the shaping of human souls toward virtue, helping confront what Babbitt characterized as the “civil war of the cave” that occurs in every human heart. Babbitt and More’s roughly forty-year friendship produced sc … | Continue reading
Oppenheimer replies to him “Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love.” | Continue reading
I’ve found that in perplexing or challenging circumstances, “why?” is a boring question. We like why. The leadership guru Simon Sinek asks us to start with why. It’s a popular question. I’m not against finding your why. I just think it’s overrated. Particularly in suffering or pa … | Continue reading
You can’t actually get to utopia; it only seems like you can because it looms so large. I think it’s better to start wherever you are, and ask what it needs you to do. | Continue reading
“The Community Community.” Nathan Beacom parses the effects that digital technologies have had on the way we imagine and experience community: “something important has changed about the way we think about community in the internet age. A word that once referred to a group of peop … | Continue reading
The course I am teaching is part of the university’s core curriculum. Core comes from the Latin word for “heart,” I told my students. The same Latin root, cor, gives us the word, courage, I added. Why might the courses at the heart of the university’s curriculum require courage? … | Continue reading
Mr. McNabb recognizes the central passion of Fr. Vincent: his deep love for Christ, expressed through a severe asceticism, a total devotion to traditional Catholic doctrine and social teaching, a commitment to love and serve the poor, a tireless effort to preach and teach the Gos … | Continue reading
Repeatedly, some of the best students I have taught have been homeschooled. What set them apart was precisely the spirit of bold curiosity that I see in my own kids: that bright light in their eyes, an interest in asking questions and in pursuing rabbit trails independently. | Continue reading
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 e … | Continue reading
“The Kind of People We Need at the End of the World.” Elizabeth Oldfield shares her family’s journey into communal living and relates how the humble, daily acts of prayer and cooking and gardening form her response to the forces of despair: “I am gardening because I feel anxious … | Continue reading
When my wife and I started our rural homestead, we were suburbanites with a lot of ideas. For one, we’d do everything organically. No question. Second, we’d endeavor to only use hand tools. Scythe, sickle, spade. We’d become experts in the old ways. And third, we’d limit outside … | Continue reading
Even in our modern age, then, it seems that Trueman’s “modern self” as narcissistic echo chamber, unconstrained by relationships with family and community, has not entirely triumphed after all. | Continue reading
Conjuring makes me think of force and manipulation, which as writers we have to forswear. Readers will either notice they're being manipulated and throw our books aside—or maybe worse, they won't notice, and then we'll be called to account for whatever it is we've irresponsibly d … | Continue reading
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 … | Continue reading
“The Death of Conservatism Is Greatly Exaggerated.” In her critical response to Jon Askonas’s essay on how technologies erode traditions, Christine Rosen takes issue with his argument that conservatism has failed to adequately respond to technological disruptions: “In our technol … | Continue reading
But that love for baseball didn’t mean that we organized our lives around the sport, or that any parent with a Little Leaguer had baseball scholarships in mind. It didn’t enter into the picture. A child’s life was not packaged up and dressed for ambition. That meant, too, that th … | Continue reading
Laird Mackintosh is a longtime Broadway actor who had the opportunity and privilege to play the Phantom himself in the final performances of the Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom closed in April after 35 years on Broadway and was Broadway’s longest running show. Laird discusses p … | Continue reading
What comes out is a story of a small group of Reformed Canadian Baptists who are rural, hardworking, self-educated (largely by reading the Bible), and persistent in becoming holy, but not without earning some dry humor along the way. Jeffrey excels at the hard task of publishing … | Continue reading
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