Front Porch Republic
Homo Sepeliendi and the Chechen Deportation
Before the deportation, Chechnya belonged, in a significant sense, to the old world.
Or We Could Leave our Bank Card for a Stranger
The surveillance state is meant to be like God: all seeing, all knowing. An essential third attribute—all loving—seems to have never been considered.
LLMs as the Worst of Both Worlds: A Review of Cory Doctorow’s The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI
Most current iterations and applications of AI in the form of LLMs actually turn humans into reverse centaurs.
The Story in the Ordinary: A Review of Eric Cyr’s Here it Snows in June
There is always more at stake in our everyday lives than might at first meet the eye.
Toward a Transpartisan Politics of Limits and Beauty
Consumerism's troubling impacts on American society are a concern of both Right and Left. But limiting our material appetites doesn't have to be a sacrifice.
News, Notes, & Podcasts
Newsletter Editor:
Jeffrey BilbroEnter your email to receive a weekly newsletter highlighting what’s new at FPR.
Sunshine Bores the Daylights Out of Me: Songs About Dreams
This week we’re listening to songs about dreams—not in the sense of goals or ambition but in the sense of images that flash across your subconscious as you sleep. Send…
Stake My Place at the Singles Bar: Pick-Up Songs
This week on A Symposium of Popular Songs, we’re listening mostly to songs about men picking up, or trying to pick up, women—though there are two songs that reverse that…
NIMBYs, Ghosts, and Beauty
Brian Miller cuts hay in the same field he’s been mowing for twenty-six years.
Edgy and Dull: Songs About Obsession
For a while, the episode risked becoming an episode on unreliable narrators—but really we’re talking about obsession, a subject I suspect we all know something about. Send your song suggestions…
More Articles
Humanitas: Mundane, Magnificent, and Wanting More
Leo calls us to find meaning in the mundane aspects of human life and care. In doing so, he articulates the centrality of limits in the human experience.
A Resurgence of Educational Localism? A Review of Skipping School
Unusually for books on homeschooling, Skipping School is written for both scholarly and general audiences.
In Defense of Our Country: On the Need to Resist AI and AI Data Centers
The holiness of the world: that is the heart of the matter. The doors of perception must be cleansed to see the holiness again.
Building Bulwarks against Dehumanization
It may be time for willing churches to begin devoting more resources to the active pursuit of remaining human.
The Humane Localism of Pope Leo XIV
Both global solidarity and local subsidiarity are needed if we are to address the emerging technology of so-called AI in sane and humane ways.
A Much-Needed Reaction to The Dark Enlightenment
This desire to reduce liberalism to economic liberalism is taken to its extreme in the dark enlightenment.
Subsidiarity: A New Intellectual Virtue?
Responsibilities—actions, decisions, discussions—should be exercised at the level closest to the individual and only move “upward” if necessary.
Magnifica Humanitas, Artificial Intelligence, and Amish Country
Well, what would the Amish do, I wondered?
Magnifica Humanitas and a Healthy Realism
Magnifica Humanitas encourages us to not give up on changing the world
A Brief Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching
At the heart of CST is the title of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical: magnificent humanity
AI Data Centers, Exponential Growth, and the “J Curve” from Hell
AI may be perceived as an “immaterial” technology, but it totally depends on data centers that have intense physical demands.
Localists Abroad: A Conversation with Joel Carillet
Sometimes I’ll sit still for, say, an hour, and imagine all the people around the world who have embraced me, shook my hand, kissed my cheek.
From the Archive
From the Editor–Local Culture 4.1: The Civil Dissent Issue
Think not, then, of the ubiquitous screens and hideous architecture and suburban metastasis and microwave dinners. Think rather of Eric Voegelin’s famous quip—Voegelin, who said that “no one is obliged…
Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get…
Tanya Berry’s Faithful Art
Women like Tanya bring artistry and honor to everything they touch: the homes they inhabit, the land they steward, the children they raise. These photographs are testimony to the clear,…
Can There be a National Conservatism?
Here’s the irony: a growing number of conservatives realize that it will require the assistance of the State to correct many of the problems that have been created by the…
Cheese Should Be Dangerous
The cheese crafted here came about as a byproduct of a larger whole, the natural dividend of a complete way of life, and this is the foundation of the best…