News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
It's been a fun week celebrating FPR's 15th anniversary. For an amateur operation that runs on bubble gum and bailing wire, that's pretty remarkable. Thanks for being part of this rather quixotic venture.
- In this week's Water Dipper I recommend a short story about Port William and essays about local news and the liberal arts.
- Jeff Polet considers why Porchers can be joyful despite being on the losing side of most issues: "FPR has always been about two things that are more important now than ever: hope and fun."
- Kate Dalton commends good work, even if it remains humble and out of sight: "So to all my friends in this haven, this meeting place, this village green—you lovers of federalism, distributism, neighbors, neighborhoods, regional accents, little platoons, and forty acres and a mule—happy anniversary."
- Jason Peters reminds us that the stories on the front pages of newspapers may not be the most important stories. The localist "can’t affect blindness in the face of such grim realities as the goddamned Machine, the dysfunctional but all-intrusive Fed, the sinister machinations of the demoniacs in Silly Con Valley and their pusillanimous all-havoc-wreaking “smart” phones. But he can refuse to own one. He can turn toward the things at hand, and he must."
- Bill Kauffman recalls the insult that helped prompt FPR's formation: "The Empire did not fall the day Front Porch Republic rose. But in 15 years FPR has done much more than simply add weight to the human scale. It has revivified the most humane and practical traditions in American social, cultural, economic, and political life and thought."
- Mark Mitchell reminds us that friendship lies at the heart of FPR's project: "Friendship is, in fact, a vital key to any flourishing political order, for friendship is rooted in affection and a commitment to the good of the friend, which translates in the aggregate to a commitment to the common good. And friendship is necessarily local."
I've been reading Albert J. Nock's 1931 book The Theory of Education in the United States for an upcoming gathering. It's a strange little book that was originally a set of lectures he delivered at the University of Virginia. But this is at least part of the reason why we read old books--for their strangeness. It's quite interesting to see his examples of businessmen trying to make sense of why the stock market crash happened or his take on the contrast between American and European education. Near the end, he reminds his readers that the continuance of "the Great Tradition" of humane learning and inquiry doesn't depend on their labors:
The Great Tradition will be no man's debtor. When we speak of promoting it or continuing it, we are using a purely conventional mode of speech, as when we say that the sun rises or sets. We can do nothing for the Great Tradition; our fidelity to it can do everything for us. Creatures of a day, how shall we think that what we do or leave undone is of consequence to that which abides forever? Our devotion, our integrity of purpose, our strictness of conscience, are not exercised in behalf of the Great Tradition, but in our own behalf. Our recreancy cannot weaken it, our faithfulness cannot strengthen it; we alone are damaged by the one and edified by the other. The Great Tradition is independent of us, not we of it. We can not augment or diminish the force of its august and salutary laws; we can but keep to them, and therein find our exceeding great reward. We have therefore no responsibility but the happy one of keeping our eye single to our own obedience.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro