The Stump

Meaningless Manchester: Do Provincial Cities Exist?

It is meant to reference, to supplement, but also to circumvent. Manchester doesn’t do smog or spinning jennies anymore. It’s a friendly city. Come on in.

Why I Wish I Didn’t Have a Smartphone and Computer (But...

We can agree that many technological “advances” have objectively done more harm than good, in terms of the human condition as well as the Earth, and that we face a bleak scenario of looming catastrophe. But this doesn’t mean that there is no way out.

The Language of Numbers

Math is certainly not the best language for every situation, but it is essential for many situations. And once we understand this, and not merely acknowledge it but shift our paradigms to understand it as a very special method of communication, we can use math without fear.

Reclaiming our Private Economies

Hillsborough, NC. The term “care” is used in our times to signify tasks like feeding, changing diapers, bathing, and otherwise maintaining the well-being of...

The Burden Of Youth

Why are so many of Uncle Sam’s children so miserable? What is going on? The reasons are one part mystery and one part well-known. It is worth reflecting on them.

Planning and The Politics of Beauty: Reflections on Stewart Udall

If you’ve ever visited Canyonlands National Park, or hiked the Appalachian Trail, or spent time at over a hundred other similar locations across America’s beautiful and diverse ecosystems and geography, it’s likely that you have Stewart Udall at least partly to thank.

How to Be a Liberal-Socialist-Conservative

The mark by which we recognize a rightly ordered way of thinking about politics, it seems to me, is that such a way of thinking should recall us to the fact that we are, and that we receive, gifts.

Democracy’s Despotic Drift

A court decision that returns to the people the power to decide the pressing questions of the day could be considered fatal to democracy only in an age as Orwellian as this one, when doublethink routinely masquerades as rational thought.

Putting Two Things Together: Reflections on Institution Building

I came away from Steubenville, as I came away later from Grove City, with the startling idea that things are possible. Small things; local things; putting two things together, not all things but two things.

Reject the Consumer: Imagining A New Identity Politics

Freeing ourselves from the corrosive Consumer identity isn’t an individual task, but a call for system change rings hollow if we are afraid of personal change. How can we imagine a world beyond the Consumer if we can’t talk about our experiences of consuming and acknowledge that down-powering will not be easy?