Tag: localism

Thoughts on Teaching Wendell Berry

Teaching Wendell Berry to students today isn't a thankless task, but the victories are small and far between (which, one might say, is all the best victories always are).

Can Votes Determine whether Ryan Howard is Better than Albert Pujols?

If voting for your favorite baseball player doesn't prove his greatness, does the same lesson apply to your favorite or even your own community?

Out of the Fissure, Real Energy: A Response to God’s Economy

Perhaps out of these fissures and the current populist turmoil, someone might be able to craft a new, more coherent, and more promising Christian and Democratic coalition.

Christian Democratic Communities and Teleological States: A Response to God’s Economy

If your religion--or at least your concept of the moral norms of the civil order--lacks a notion of grace, it therefore also lacks a notion of gifts; all it can say is that some people are lucky, not that some people are blessed.

An Arch Needs Many Stones: A Response to “God’s Economy”

But how can such plural sovereignty be realised under the circumstances of this century? Who will guard the guardians, so to speak? How will the stones of the arch fit together?

From Olive Trees to Overcapacity

A homogeneous global consumer culture flattens its victims. And, perhaps in the same vein, our meanderings around the dying furniture capital of Yecla turned up nothing: virtually everything on display fitted what has become the decorative style of contemporary Spain: the sort of stuff one might find in a Copenhagen dentist’s office.

The Vast White Landscape: E.B. White’s “Great Snows” Revisited

Rock Island, IL A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to...

What Colour Is the Village Green?

Often the politics of the local turns on the “who” as much as the “where.” Switzerland showed as much very recently.  The country enjoys some...

Citizens of the World, Divide!

Moorpark, CA. We are told to be careful with our words, to be aware of how our words might make other people feel or...

Independent Populists?

Michael Lind over at Salon suggests a disparity between populism and the "liberal left." Given Sarah Plain's new book, in which she continues to...