The rise of techno-capitalism has signaled the triumph of the “bourgeois family” and the demise of the “traditional” family. Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas said that economist Adam Smith was well aware that the “weakening of familial ties would increase the necessity of sympathy between strangers and result in cooperative forms of behavior that had not [...]
Berry’s economic program, what he calls the “little economy,” is a smaller wheel in the larger motion of the “Great Economy.” To understand the former, it is vital to grasp the latter. In the following, then, Berry’s vision of the broader drama of human action is set forth, followed by a presentation of his narrower [...]
Wendell Berry In this lecture Mr. Berry challenges our assumptions about the economy, our culture and our place in the world. He also asks profound questions regarding our connections with each other and the environment. Will we seek to escape our limits and reconnect with nature, our families, our neighbors and our own [...]
The Southern Agrarians represent one of the most interesting movements of the first half of the twentieth century. Principled as well as intellectual, the Agrarians offered much for America to ponder. Sadly, however, it is quite possible the Southern Agrarians of the 1920s and 1930s will be remembered, if at all, as a footnote to [...]
Among the contributions to I’ll Take My Stand, Allen Tate’s “Remarks on the Southern Religion” is usually interpreted as the most acerbic, immoderate, and unusual essay in the collection. All too often the essay is read as an apologia for violence or an eccentric defense of tradition. In fact, Tate–like his fellow Agrarians–was seeking to [...]
I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling [...]
As I’m thinking about the various influences on Kirk (and, hence, the post-WWII American Right), I started thinking about the Southern Agrarians as well as the English Distributists. There are many who write for this blog who know far more about these groups than I do. But, from what I can tell, this American version [...]
In one of his syndicated columns published during the 1970s, the founder of The University Bookman famously wrote, “There is nothing more conservative than conservation.” Russell Kirk, considered one of the founders of post-war conservatism—that supposedly heartless, devil-catch-the-hindmost view of life that (again, supposedly) considers nature a nuisance to be tamed or destroyed—was a great admirer of [...]