Wichita, KS. I'm more than capable of putting on my localist and communitarian hat(s) during the fall, winter, and spring: I defend the public schools, speak out in favor of walking, urge everyone to buy local and eat right,...
Science, Normative and Positive
Some wag somewhere has remarked that economists suffer from “physics envy.” One could certainly make that charge against W. S. Jevons (1835-1882), one of the founders of marginal economics, when he wrote that a “perfect system...
Washington, CT. Winter was a hard-nosed professional this season just past. It sunk its icy teeth in long and hard and mocked us with a one day January thaw that in years past, had usually afforded at least a...
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS.* Recently on this virtual stoop, questions have arisen about the "tone" of discussion generally, and particularly in the comment section (I refuse the neologism "combox" as an ugly stain on a beautiful language).
I regard these kinds of questions to...
Devon, PA. This is my son. As you see him here, he has been alive for just about one-hundred-forty days and has, this and other ultrasound images suggest, my nose and not his mother's. I have not seen him...
A few weeks ago a friend's ten-year-old daughter came home from school, turned to her mother with a frown, and speaking low, so as to stay out of earshot of a younger sibling, asked, “Mom, what does the word...
A retirement dinner party for an Ivy League professor follows certain conventions. It begins with the cocktail hour where guests renew old and make new acquaintances while sipping wine and nibbling appetizers. Then follows the meal where table assignments deepen opportunities...
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
Remarking on Jeremy Beer's article on meritocracy, Patrick Deneen concludes with this grim, but correct, observation:
This, in a microcosm, is a central paradox of our political system: our cosmopolite meritocrats theoretically admire localism but abhor the idea of...
Devon, PA. When given the opportunity, I have made no secret of my great admiration for James Kalb's The Tyranny of Liberalism. Readers of FPR may, from time to time, have encountered my deferring the answer to some argument...
Jeremy Beer has masterfully articulated the ideology of meritocracy and the destruction it wreaks upon the small towns and non-major cities of the nation. Still, a number of sympathetic readers are beginning to ask: "nice in theory, how to...