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. [...]

More (Extra)Ordinary Discussion of (Neo)Distributism

Chris Dierkes enters the fray here.

More on Why I’m not a Libertarian — Or, When Belief in “the Market” is just risible, sad, and disgusting

1. Sitting in peculiarly busy traffic in downtown Baltimore this afternoon, I read, on the news monitor wrapped around a trashily modern glass building, a headline from the Baltimore Sun that informed me that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has proposed a bill to create a new government agency “that could stop lenders from offering mortgages [...]

WWGKD?

In a post for which I could claim authorship, over at The League, E.D. Kain, with bookend quotations from Chesterton, offers much food for thought, continuing on something that he and others at FPR, and I, have been discussing, on distributism, providing able, fair criticisms of both free-marketeers and economic-interventionists, and, wouldn’t you know, prescribing [...]

“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. [...]

Place, Faith, and Political Philosophy, or How I Became a Distributist

My undergraduate program, the Program of Liberal Studies, requires a capstone senior essay for graduation. Long, long ago, in the 2005-2006 academic year, I composed mine on Distributism. I believe — hope, certainly — that I could write it better today than I did then; nonetheless, I’ve posted the introduction, which tells the story of [...]

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!) [...]

Henry and Hilaire Walk into a Bar

A wonderful, homey pub, actually.
They enjoy a few pints each, the best ales and lagers either had ever enjoyed. The owner-brewer, prevented from expanding into a major regional establishment by differential taxes meant to encourage widespread distribution of property, thereby limiting the banality of a landscape marred with repetition, opted instead to focus on improving [...]

An Economist for All Seasons

I have, for some time, wanted to draw further attention to economist Wilhelm Röpke, perhaps the only economist ever compel to question my general disdain for practitioners of the dismal science, who sought to salvage the good name of his ilk from Burke’s association of them with sophisters and calculators, and whom I have discussed, [...]