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Does Wendell Berry Have Rose-Colored Glasses?
Given the unpopular and uncompromising stands that Wendell Berry takes, it’s only natural that many readers fiercely disagree with him. Some of these disagreements are simply matters of preference. As...
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On Dreher’s Benedict Option, the Christians and Localists Who Can Live It,...
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Rod Dreher and I aren’t close friends, but like many Front Porch Regulars, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to associate with and learn from him a handful of times...
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Why Anti-Liberalism Fails
The Failures of Liberalism The intellectual critique of liberalism is coextensive with liberalism itself, going back at least as far as Giambattista Vico’s dispute with Descartes. The term “liberalism”...
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American Conservatism, and the Socialist Specter Which Haunts It Still
[Cross-posted to In Media Res] Back in February, Rod Dreher shared with his readers an idea for a new book: to introduce conservative Christians in America to “the warnings that people who grew up...
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Asceticism is for Everyone
Those who are inclined to agree with Patrick Deneen (and others) that liberalism has indeed failed may ask what way of life would be more conducive to human flourishing. Deneen speaks favorably of...
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Why Aren’t There More Conservative Anarchists? On Recovering a Consistent...
The title of my essay suggests my goal, which is simultaneously modest and audacious. It is modest because I want to convince the reader that there is a genuine puzzle here, rather than demonstrate a...
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Fidelity to the Truth in an Illiberal Time, on Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies
Evans, GA. In The Benedict Option’s chapter on politics Rod Dreher says, “The question before us now is whether our current political situation is a betrayal of liberal democracy or, given its core...
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Warnings Heeded and Unheeded: A Review of Live Not by Lies
Meridian, ID. While few intellectuals would reject the label “prophetic” should their work be deemed such, true prophets are almost universally condemned as crazy, alarmist, or worse. Prophets warn...
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Live Not by Lies from Neither the Left nor Right
Martin, TN. I was in the middle of Rod Dreher’s book, Live Not by Lies (2020), when I looked up and saw the U.S. Capitol being overrun by horned agitators, QAnon conspiracists, MAGA Civil War-ists,...
View ArticleCollectivism and Violence are One
Lafayette, CA. “The main idea of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful man,” Dostoevsky wrote to his niece, in an 1868 letter, of what would become The Idiot. “There is nothing more difficult...
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