News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
I've been killing Japanese beetles as fast as I can to give my green beans and apple trees a fighting chance. After a recent trip to Pittsburgh, which is inundated with spotted lanternflies, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before those become part of my summer pest battle.
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Garth Brown takes a sober look at the vulnerabilities--and strengths--of industrial agriculture in his review of John Klar's Small Farm Republic: "The industrial food system has profound problems, from its impact on human health to its degradation of the environment to its mass mistreatment of domestic animals. Yet what stuck with me, what I’ve been ruminating on since reading Klar’s book, is how differently he and I diagnose the underlying ailment."
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Ben Christenson considers the traditionalist ethos of a current TV show: "Turns out, there are other Mandalorians, and our hero is a traditionalist. After this encounter, some speculated that Mando would go 'the way of the creedless Unitarianians, steadily shedding his beliefs one by one.'"
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James Krueger argues that conservation is profoundly conservative: "To appeal to personal rights seems to be an appeal to the highest value, and it is no wonder that people are feeling spiritually and socially starved. No one in earlier times would have considered his rights apart from his duties and responsibilities, or her privileges apart from her obligations."
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Jon Schaff reviews Alexander Salter's new book on distributism and commends its careful consideration of this economic and political model: "It is not enough to snicker at the distributists, make a hobbit joke, and then move on to the glorious efficiency of globalized markets. Salter is asking economists, especially those most dedicated to free-market absolutism, to take distributism’s political economics seriously."
Writing in 1986, Langdon Winner warned about the challenges that computer technology would pose for those who value decentralized cultures and economies. Such technologies inevitably violate spatial boundaries and erode the integrity of places:
Perhaps the most significant challenge posed by the linking of computers and telecommunications is the prospect that the basic structures of political order will be recast. Worldwide computer, satellite, and communication networks fulfill, in large part, the modern dream of conquering space and time. These systems make possible instantaneous action at any point on the globe without limits imposed by the specific location of the initiating actor. Human beings and human societies, however, have traditionally found their identities within spatial and temporal limits. They have lived, acted, and found meaning in a particular place at a particular time. Developments in microelectronics tend to dissolve these limits, thereby threatening the integrity of social and political forms that depend on them. Aristotle’s observation that ‘man is a political animal’ meant in its most literal sense that man is a polis animal, a creature naturally suited to live in a particular kind of community within a specific geographical setting, the city-state. Historical experience shows that it is possible for human beings to flourish in political units—kingdoms, empires, nation-states—larger than those the Greeks thought natural. But until recently the crucial conditions created by spatial boundaries of political societies were never in question.
That has changed. Methods pioneered by transnational corporations now make it possible for organizations of enormous size to manage their activities effectively across the surface of the planet. Business units that used to depend upon spatial proximity can now be integrated through complex electronic signals. If tis seems convenient to shift operations from one area of the world to another far distant, it can be accomplished with a flick of a switch. Close an office in Sunnyvale; open an office in Singapore. In the recent past corporations have had to demonstrate at least some semblance of commitment to geographically based communities; their public relations often stressed the fact that they were “good neighbors.” But in an age in which organizations are located everywhere and nowhere, this commitment easily evaporates. A transnational corporation can play fast and loose with everyone, including the country that is ostensibly its “home.” Towns, cities, regions, and whole nations are forced to swallow their pride and negotiate for favors. In that process, political authority is gradually redefined.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro