Paging Jeremy Beer: Indiana-born Miss America 2009, Agrarian

The whole Miss America thing usually doesn’t interest me much, but, while sitting in my grandfather’s living room, I noticed something in the 3 July issue of Indiana AgriNews that really piqued my interest: Katie Stam, Miss America 2009, is the first to hail from Indiana. More important (Yes, even more important than some Hoosier [...]

Coming This Weekend

I know that, as seems always to be the case, I’ve been dreadfully remiss in the upkeep of this humble online bastion of Nathanism, and for this I apologize. I’m sure I’ve been busy or something. Anyhow, I just relieved myself of a serious academic burden, and intend to write a few things this weekend. [...]

“Reviving Our Sense of Place, Our Priorities of Localism, Agrarianism, and Self-government”, Part II

Why, then, a “Jeffersonian” New Urbanism? (Part One.)
A few years have passed since I last read any of the Anti-Federalist Papers; lately, slowly, I’ve been getting back to that, starting with introductory material from editor Ralph Ketcham and some of the important Constitutional debates. To me, one of the greatest failings of the Anti-Federalists [...]

“Reviving Our Sense of Place, Our Priorities of Localism, Agrarianism, and Self-government”, Part I

As I noted in my post-script to the introduction to my senior essay, E.D. Kain presents a superb, indeed “Front Porch Republic-worthy” piece, “Redefining Prosperity,” an essay so ambitious, loaded, and impressive that I’ll refrain from even attempting to reply as deeply as I had hoped, leaving part of the task to the able Mr. [...]

Conservatism versus Capitalism: Eschewing “Creative Destruction”

From the forthcoming issue of The Terrapin Times (It’s about damn time we go to print again. *sigh*), my CPAC 2009-inspired op.-ed. on the tension between conservatism and capitalism.
Having submitted to morbid curiosity, I ventured to the Friday installment of CPAC 2009, hoping again to hear and to meet Ron Paul (Double-check!) [...]

Better than folding socks

Struggling to sleep tonight, I had afore me two options: I could match my socks — always a vexing ordeal (Where do those wandering socks go when they leave their partners cuckolded?) — or I could read further in Wendell Berry’s The Art of the Commonplace. Persevering, slowly as I do, in my quest to [...]

“Future Perfect”: Peak oil, Mayberry, and a saner world

Peak-oil believers have multiplied like religious revivalists across America and the world, describing on their websites how they became, in the language of
conversion, “peak oil aware.” Still, the news coverage falls back on old stereotypes—
environmentalist, survivalist, homesteader, and homeschooler—often dismissing peak oil, like most useful ideas, as an obsession of the far Left or [...]

Welcome to Patrick J. Ford!

Patrick, who serves as editor-in-chief at The George Washington Patriot, posts on that paper’s web-log, and contributes to @TAC while interning at the The American Conservative, has entered the web-log-sphere on his own, introducing, today, The Northern Agrarian. He shall, I assure you, be worth adding to the r.s.s. feed and web-log roll.

Post number one on Weyrich and Lind’s Next Conservatism

The American Conservative, in its 12 February 2007 issue, ran an article, titled, simply, “The Next Conservatism”, co-authored by Messrs. Weyrich and Lind, which argued that “By rejecting ideology and embracing “retroculture,” the Right can recover itself and perhaps reverse America’s decline.” I’ve mentioned before that I intend to comment on, at least, a couple [...]

“New houses are universally horrible, and eco-houses are the most horrible of the lot”

With regard to the British Guardian, I generally hold ambivalent, tending toward moderately disdainful, feelings. Via Arts & Letters Daily, though, I discovered a stupendously honest, spot-on piece, from Germaine Greer, lamenting the grotesqueness of the (European) homes that herald modern prosperity and “escape” from the drudgeries of Arcadia.
Vernacular building had the advantage that [...]