Tag: Alexis de Tocqueville

While in my current brief stint in D.C., I am often given a puzzled look when I tell someone that I am going back to the farm: “You’ve made it to D.C., haven’t you? Why would you go back?” I’m going back because the farm and all it means are more important than anything I can do or want to do here. It is more meaningful to go to a place that has claims on you, for that is where you can best serve and live the good life.

Daniel Elazar was emphatic that a “renewed sense of localism” was essential to America’s future. For Americans, this means renewed intentionality about our local communities, not merely living in one place for a sustained period of time.

Rugged individualists need not be atomists; and there are compelling reasons why even Enlightenment liberals should be front porch republicans.

Add the past year on to this already disturbing trend, and such destructive realities have only been further exacerbated. The need for human sociality is not a deficiency, nor is it something that we can just put on hold for an indefinite amount of time.

Scotsdale, AZ. With a vaccine on the horizon, it is time to think hard about how our country should look when the pandemic ends....

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.

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.

Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think...

The resurgent debate between Christians that defend classical liberalism and those that critique liberalism tout court has been deeply instructive. This debate, however, threatens to...

Plato remarked in the Republic that if one wanted to know the health of a city, we could simply look at the souls of...