Articles 356
Monuments to Human Stupidity? A Review of David Betz’s A Guarded Age
The film Patton contains many quotable quotes, some of which cannot be repeated on a family friendly website such as Front Porch (for example, what it might have been like…
The Long Row
So to all my friends in this haven, this meeting place, this village green—you lovers of federalism, distributism, neighbors, neighborhoods, regional accents, little platoons, and forty acres and a mule—happy…
Walk Boldly, Darlin’ Clementine
Walk boldly. Whistle not, but do keep walking. Keep walking right on by it and let the dead bury the dead.
Doppelganger: Me and George Monbiot in the Mirror World
Our modernist mindset too easily leads us to the comfortable notion that ‘they’–the government, the scientists, whoever–are going to save us with the latest whizz-bang techno-fix. They’re not. Nobody is…
Naming and Seeing our Neighbors
In these movements, we are but a speck of dust in the great desert. But here, where our feet are, we hold a power forgotten.
Why We Don’t Believe in Free Will
A quarter of a century ago, Wendell Berry wrote, “the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish…
The Virtues of Sheep
A chief virtue of sheep is, indeed, that they are content with remarkably little, and—this is key—they are rooted and aware citizens of their locale.
Abandoned Altars
Here, in this shed’s unremarkable pool of silence, I am reminded of other places where silence stretched like an ocean. I happened upon one of those waning shores the previous…
In Defense of Livestock
Rushing to enslave themselves like animals in a cage, the animal rights and climate activists who think they are on the “right side of history” are unwittingly reinforcing their dependence…
Finding a Home Field: A Review of In Thought, Word, and Seed
If I am therefore departing one field in which I hoped to do some good work in place, I hope to deepen my practice as an English professor who lives…
Rooted Lives or Activist Lifestyles?
In a world in which there are so many problems to solve, solitude plays an important role in helping us remember that life consists of more than finding and righting…
The Last Wild Harvest
Do we treat the created order as if it belongs to God or exclusively to ourselves? Is dominion the same as domination? Is stewardship the same as subjugation? Such notions…
The Timeless Way of Building: A Review
Why is it that we can all say that this building works, that this room is just right, that this town is good and pleasing? Why is it that we…
Rejoice Evermore, Even for Grocery-Store Chicken
If we imagine that the fate of our times hangs upon our efforts, we’ll deceive ourselves and miss out on the goods and pleasures that are at hand waiting to…
Philadelphia: The City of Freedom
As Americans, we must remember that place matters, and our founding principles are best understood when we look at how they were made real in the city of brotherly love.
Small Isn’t Beautiful? Localism and Its Critics
The promise and peril of current forms of localism, with Trevor Latimer.
The Census Taker In a Church Pew, Part 4
Yet our little sister does not play the victim. She presses on, a sufferer who labors as best she can while shadows and thorns press in against her. And she…
Rights and Duties
Our duty is to live lives that conform to what is good, true, and beautiful. Natural rights in general, and the rights enshrined in the Constitution in particular, are means…
A Flat Surface Upon Which to Eat
It’s a new year, and many of us are thinking about self-improvement. This is a wonderful thing to do. We all need a bit of a tune-up now and then.…
On Bars in Church Basements
Might our local faith communities support such cultivation of virtue, while also restoring what might again be a hub of parish social life?