Written by a TFP Author

The “Strong Money” of Good King Saint Louis by John Horvat II

But is it in accord with good economics?

Good Stuff Over at Resilience

The hidden reasons behind slow economic growth: Declining EROI, constrained net energy by Kurt Cobb (Resilience)

Changing Human Circumstances by Colin J. Campbell

Feed Yourself by Alex Smith, Marjory Wildcraft, Richard Heinberg (Resilience)

The Law of Diminishing Returns by Richard Heinberg (Resilience)


How America Became an Oligarchy by Ellen Brown (Resilience)

Bank Robbery: Banks and the Money Supply by Ivo Mosley (Resilience)

Items of Interest, 10 May 2012, Part 1

Conservative? by Stratford Caldecott

A Teaching for [r]epublicans: Roman History and the Nation’s First Identity by M. E. Bradford

The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson by James W. Ely, Jr.

PJB, Is This the End of One Europe

The Right’s False Prophet
Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America, Paul Gottfried, Cambridge University Press, 182 pages
By Kenneth B. McIntyre

Thomas Fleming, Mrs. Warren's Professions and Obama's Dramatic Revelation

Obama, Marriage, and the “Anti-Gay” Theme by Matthew J. Franck
Marriage and Procreation: The Intrinsic Connection by Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley
We the People and Homosexual Marriage
Two Steps from Reasonable About Marriage by Stephen J. Heaney
PJB, The Antietam of the Culture War
Orson Scott Card, What Right is Really at Stake (Was it removed? Republished here.)

James Matthew Wilson, Contraception and Signs of Contradiction: Part 2

Yia-Yia's Nagging Morals:
Last year a Greek food company produced a series of creative and wildly popular ads that juxtaposed modern young people doing what modern young people do—cohabiting, dressing immodestly, and being a stay-at-home dad...

Why hasn't the West already collapsed? Why the delay? Providence?

The Stark Truth: Interview with Virgil Goode (mp3)

Who the hell is "Julia," and why am I paying for her whole life? by David Harsanyi

Richard Spencer, The Future of Alternative Right

Bill Kauffman, How I Met Eldridge Cleaver

Tomgram: Ernest Callenbach, Last Words to an America in Decline

Peter Hitchens, Blood and Iron versus Bread and Wine, the Sad Fate of France in a German Europe

American Empire and Leviathan:
U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

Daniel Larison, Obama's Foreign Policy Isn't Restrained or Prudent, Democratic Realists and Obama's Foreign Policy

The Hive and the Heterodoxy by Kelley B. Vlahos

The President’s Private War by Andrew P. Napolitano

Video Shocker:TSA Aggressively Pats Down Congressman

Surveillance State Democracy

Srdja Trifkovic, The Syrian Rebels and the KLA,
Srebrenica as Holocaust

Drores in US Flight Paths

Michael Hill, The False Idol of American Democracy

John Michael Greer, Descent into Stasis

Confederate Memorial Day

The Policeman's Your Friend - As Long as He Can Afford to Be

Counterpunch:
DAVE LINDORFF, The Subsidized Student Loan Scam
RALPH NADER, The Greediness of Brain Drain
TINA LYNN EVANS AND TOM KERNS, Fracking Humanity
KEVIN CARSON, The Crackdown on Occupy
THOMAS H. NAYLOR, Either Way, It’s Business as Usual (Naylor advocates the complete break-up of the "Federal" union.)
PATRICK COCKBURN, The Last Months of Osama bin Laden
HARVEY WASSERMAN, The Nuclear Industry Has Melted in Japan and France


Economics:
Kevin Carson, ALEC’s Fake “Free Market” Apologists on the Right
New IMF working paper models impact of oil limits on the economy by Gail Tverberg (EB)

Distributist Review: A Review of Money as Debt

Bare Bones Biology 106 – Richard Heinberg (mp3)

The Age of Limits Conference: The Conversation I Would Like to Have by y Orren Whiddon

Water commons, water citizenship and water security (EB)
by Buenaventura Dargantes, Mary Ann Manahan, Daniel Moss, and V. Suresh

Killer Summary of Austrian Views of Money, Banking and the Fed — Delivered in Congressional Testimony!

Chris Martenson on TED letures: 'Cornucopians in Space' Deliver a Dangerously Misguided Message

America the Possible: A Discussion with James Gustave Speth, May 15 (essay also available at Yes! Magazine)

Relocalization:
Mark T. Mitchell on Robert Nisbet, Multiply Your Associations and Be Free

A report on ‘Peak Money and Economic Resilience’, a Transition Network one-day conversation

A California Bestiary

Filipa Pimentel on Transition in Portugal: “we try to reduce money exchange in everything we do”
Peak cycling? Bikes are oil hungry beasts
Leveraging Their Localness: A New Piggly Wiggly Commercial All About Local

A New Kind of Corner Store: Healthy Local Food for All

Is Facebook Making us Lonely (FPR)

Permaculture and Farming:
Suburban Permaculture with Janet Barocco and Richard Heinberg

More on Tara Firma Farms

Planting and Mid-Life Crisis



6 Ideas for the Future of Food

Farming Future Despite What Neighbours Think


Peak Oil and Energy:
Tomgram: Michael Klare, Oil Wars on the Horizon
Visualize Gasoline by Richard Heinberg (EB)
The peak oil crisis: perspective by Tom Whipple (EB)

Kickstarter: The Watt: An Energy 101 Primer

Silencing Communities: How the Fracking Industry Keeps Its Secrets

Can renewable energy sustain consumer societies? by Samuel Alexander

A tide of oil and greed by Erik Wallenberg

Items of Interest, 17 April 2012

Thomas Fleming, The Decline of the American Empire

Christopher Blum, Man, Proud Man (A review of Domenico Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-History)

Mike Church, Restoring Republicanism as the Proper Form of American Governance

Bar Refaeli Unloads on Handsy Airport Screener -- You MUST Be a Lesbian

'Heretics': The Crisis Of American Christianity
Ross Douthat's Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
(Religion News, Christianity Today)
He'll be on C-Span.

Joel Salatin on Life: Participate Viscerally
Joel Salatin responds to New York Times’ ‘Myth of Sustainable Meat’

Jailing Americans for Profit: The Rise of the Prison Industrial Complex

Health Care in the Age of Decline

PJB, Bibi's Dilemma -- and Barack's

First Solar's Loan Guarantees: Money Laundering For Obama Cronies

The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret

Kelley Vlahos, Forget Katniss, We Need Montag

Daniel Larison, Would Romney’s Foreign Policy Be Significantly Different?

The Passion of Cesar Chavez

Economics:
Commentary: The world is finite, isn't it? by Tadeusz Patzek (EB)
The Trouble with Money by Chris Martenson
Relocalization:
Small scale farmers organise the International Peasant Day of Struggle
Getting Our Land Back (EB)
How we can bring the world out of the mess in which it finds itself by Tuhi-Ao Bailey (EB)
Limits to Growth – of stuff, value, and GDP by Brian Czech (EB)
David Holmgren: The reverse of globalization by Karen Rybold-Chin (EB)


Clothesline art, laundry activism, cash savings by Lindsay Curren (EB)

Connecting with community through storytelling by Mary Logan (EB)
Storytellers like Robert M. Peters...

Education:
Patrick Deneen, Against Great Books

Sophia Institute Press Becomes Publishing Division of Two Leading Catholic Colleges

It's the first I've heard of Holy Spirit College; I knew Sophia Institute Press had joined with Thomas More last year.

Catholic:
A Guy's Take on Modesty--From a Beach Trip
Father Spitzer: Modern-day Renaissance man
Recognition finally for a warrior priest's heroics
Epiclesis in Eucharistic Prayer I



NLM: The Resurrection in Medieval Art

Gregorios Stathis Byzantine Church Music

Orthodox:
Paschal Encyclical of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew 2012
Paschal Message of His Holiness KIRILL Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia

В діаспорі святкували український Великдень (Відео)

Feminism and Courtship/Misandry:
The Curse of Cohabitation
Shacking Up vs. Tying the Knot

The Pay Gap is a Lie



Feminism in Academic History?
Deviant Women in Courtly and Popular Medieval Castilian Poetry

‘Stronger than men and braver than knights’: women and the pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome in the later middle ages

Diet and Health
MDA: Why Fast? Part 6: Choosing a Method


Music:


Carolina Chocolate Drops "Lights In The Valley"


Anonymous 4: Celebrating 25 Years of Championing Music
Performing at Stanford tomorrow.

Kickstarter: The Porchligh Sessions (documentary) - FB




US Army:
Army tightens rules on hair, tattoos, makeup

MACP 12APR2012 PART 1

Part 2

Misc:
How to Look Like You're Special Forces
Your Mancave Needs More Beard

Items of Interest, 28 February 2012

The Great War: The Untold War Story - Then and Now by Adam Hochschild (TomDispatch)

Engelhardt and Turse, The End in Afghanistan?

Fabius Maximus: The end nears for our expedition to Afghanistan. Time to reflect on what went wrong.

Mark T. Mitchell, Living Alone

Interview with Russell Hittinger on Jacques Maritain: Scholasticism and Political Freedom (mp3)

The Politics of Health Reform from a Medieval Perspective

Book Review: The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer

Thomas Fleming on the Cleveland school shooting: Cleveland - An Anthem for Doomed Youth

Stones of Medieval Italy

David Lindsay on Margaret Thatcher: Any Old Iron

Right Minds By Samuel Goldman
What sets conservatives apart from authoritarians and fascists?

America's Founding and Limited Government
PJB: What is it that we wish to conserve?
Did the Great Society Ruin Society?

Learn French Not Chinese

Fukushima:
NYT: Japan Considered Tokyo Evacuation During the Nuclear Crisis Report Says
NPR

Economics:
The Uneconomics guide to money creation (EB)

Farming:
The Agabus Project podcast: ep2 Joel Salatin: “Building Forgiveness”
Lowell talks with Joel Salatin, farmer at Polyface Farms and author of “Folks, This Ain’t Normal.” Salatin speaks of his Christian faith, of building forgiveness into the soil, of sharing Christ freely, and choosing grace over survivalism. (photo: Rachel Salatin)
(mp3)

Sowing Seeds in the Desert by Masanobu Fukuoka

Relocalization:
Zurich Adventures in Urban Relocalization

Energy Bulletin: A food system that needs citizen Occupation (and farmers!) - Feb 28

Move Our Money: New state bank bills address credit and housing crises by Ellen Brown (EB)

Pocket Neighborhoods: Small-scale living in a large-scale world by Kelly McCartney (EB)

Peak Oil and Energy:
A Dynamic Function for EROI
Rebuttal to the director of the US Geological Survey on peak oil by Gary Charbonneau and Dave Rollo(EB)

Catholic:
NLM: Details on the Fifth Fota International Liturgy Conference
Fr. Z: REVIEW: New 3-volume (Extraordinary Form) Roman Breviary in Latin and English from Baronius Press

Music:
SFEMS: Meet Archetti (They will be performing this coming weekend - MS and FB. An article from a few years ago.)

Alamire will be coming to the west coast in... 2014. Let's see what happens before then.


TV:

Videos 1, 2, and 3

The new cast for Dancing with the Stars.

Something from US Cavalry:

Items of Interest, 12 January 2012

Peter Hitchens, Reflections on the Rule of Law, on Scotland and on an astonishingly cruel portrayal of Lady Thatcher
Daniel Larison, Thoughts on Scottish Independence

Recessing the Constitution By W. James Antle, III

Bring Order to the Commonwealth by Ordering the Soul

Virginia’s New Ecclesiasticism

Afghanistan:
Obama's Mission Accomplished Moment?
And a military-first policy on a destabilizing planet
Don’t Count on Obama’s Defense Cuts by Ivan Eland
Marine Corps Manual Offers a Blunt, Revealing Portrait of Afghan War
New National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan: War Still a Stalemate

Iran:
RALPH NADER, Iran: the Neocons Are At It Again
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, The Next War on Washington’s Agenda
GARETH PORTER, Clinton Revives Dubious Charge of “Covert” Iranian Nuclear Site

What War With Iran Might Look Like by Philip Giraldi

Fabius Maximus, Status report on the war with Iran (we’re ignorantly drifting into yet another illegal war)
What happens if Iran gets nukes? Not what we’ve been told.
What happens when a nation gets nukes? Sixty years of history suggests an answer.
What does the IAEA know about Iran’s nuclear program? Enough to start a war?

Farming and Relocalization:
Greener Pastures with Lunatic Farmer Joel Salatin (EB)
If you want more local food, stop criminalizing family farmers (EB)
How resilient is the food system? by Adam Streed (EB)

The Happy Hoarder: Put a cork in it

Gene Logsdon, Hail, The Mighty Pocketknife (EB)

Economics:
The Faustian bargain that modern economists never mention (EB)
Dr. Gary Peters, Our Finite World
Friends and Strangers: A Meditation on Money by John Médaille
Peter Hitchens, Does Immigration cause Unemployment? And other matters
The return of "The Limits to Growth" by Ugo Bardi (EB)
Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory

Peak Oil and Energy:
Warm and fuzzy on geothermal? by Tom Murphy (EB)
What do triple digit oil prices mean for growth? by Jeff Rubin
The peak oil crisis: gasoline in 2012 by Tom Whipple (EB)
Richard Heinberg, Geopolitical Implications of Peak Everything
The End of Growth

The Crisis of Civilization

The Crisis of Civilization: Trailer from thecrisisofcivilization on Vimeo.

Catholic:
British Jesuit welcomes Scorsese's latest film project (via First Thoughts)
Dominican friars appointed to the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas

Music:
Shelby Lynne: A Murder Ballad Hits Close To Home by Lynne Margolis

Documentary with Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart


California Pickers: Butch Waller

TV:
‘Justified’ Star Timothy Olyphant On Violence And Villain, Neal McDonough

Items of Interest, 2 November 2011

John Médaille v. Robert Miller, again: Is Conservatism Incoherent? Or, Pogo Was Right

John Michael Greer, A Choice of Contemplations

Jim Antle, Rebooting the Republic

Distributist Review:
There Is No Such Thing as a Bank Loan by John Médaille

Move Your Money: Campaign grows to divest from "Too Big to Fail" banks to local banks, credit unions by Amy Goodman (EB)

In praise of non-debt-based money by Graham Barnes (EB)

Oikos and Logos: Chesterton's Vision of Distributism by Richard Gill (Logos)

The Human Situation 1935–1937
William McNeile Dixon (via Scott Lahti) - the lectures

The myth of the self-made yeoman by Gene Logsdon (EB)

Occupy Wall Street's Moral Ground by Kathleen Moore

Ralph Nader, The Speculator Tax

Peak oil perspective by Tom Murphy (EB)

Life without electricity by Kazuko Kojima (EB)

Classical Education:
Rush Limbaugh on Classical Studies and Latin by Dr. Christopher Perrin

An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents (pdf)

Higher Education:
Just Don’t Go, the Sequel? By Frank Donoghue

America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education By Marty Nemko

Diet and Health:
Balanced Bites Podcast: Episode #10 with guest Robb Wolf (mp3)

LLVLC: Wise Traditions UK Conference 2011 DVD Features 14 Hours Of Lectures By Low-Carb, Real Food Activists

Music:
Gramophone: Parsons - Sacred Music
The Cardinall's Musick / Andrew Carwood

Exclusive - Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile - "Quarter Chicken Dark"

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

(the full episode)

Items of Interest, 3 October 2011

Metropolitan Hilarion meets with Pope Benedict XVI

Transition: BBC2′s ‘Town’ programme about Totnes now online!


Shifting the Suburban Paradigm by Allison Arieff

Three strikes and you are out? - commentary [on Daniel Yergin's latest]
by Jeffrey J. Brown (EB)

Mark Mitchell, On Power (the subject of the post - On Power: The Natural History of its Growth by Bertrand de Jouvenel)

MARSHALL AUERBACK, Are Trade Deficits Really That Bad?

Has he looked at the problem of unmployment in connection to the supply of cheap energy and its displacement of human energy?

The new recession by Barath Raghavan (EB)

The real recession never ended
Anthony Mirhaydari, MSN Money

We're well into a recovery, so why does it still feel so bleak? Here's why: The crunch we’re in is rooted in stagnant paychecks and payrolls, and it’s more than a decade old.

Why an understanding of money creation is essential to financial reform by Josh Ryan-Collins

Redesigning business by Justin Ritchie (EB)

VIJAY PRASHAD, De-Colonize Wall Street

99% Wrong by Jim Goad

Jeffrey Polet, Plutonomics (he links to this article in Atlantic: "Can the Middle Class Be Saved?"

Reflections of a Questioner: The Palmetto Freedom Forum Revisited by Robert P. George

The importance of the Fourteenth Amendment for Robert George.

Fr. Z: Video interview with the Secretary of the Pont. Comm. “Ecclesia Dei”. Link to the video.



PATRICK COCKBURN, The Deadly Costs of Muslim Sectarianism

Yang Lan: The generation that's remaking China

Items of Interest, 29 September 2011

Lewis McCrary, Facebook as digital passport?

As the earth turns: Going global with perennial polyculture agriculture
by Robert Jensen


Welcome to the Social Reporting Project! by Charlotte Du Cann (EB)

A Barn Full of Bats by Gene Logsdon (EB)

Green economy: fix our 'ends' not just our 'means' by Olivia Bina (EB)

Liquidity Networks: local trading systems using a debt-free electronic currency
Graham Barnes (EB)

Where Does Money Come From?



Facing economic insecurity together by Thomas Atwood

Paleo diet or 'caveman' diet gains traction despite controversies; 'This is not Fred Flintstone'



Benchmade’s Newest Battle Blade Is Ready for Abuse

Basic Training: The Making of a Soldier, React to Contact

Basic Training: The Making of a Soldier, React to Contact from Fort Benning Television on Vimeo.

English Baroque Soloists
The Project
Sir John Eliot Gardiner: The British conductor on his Bach Pilgrimage with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists

Emperor of What? by KMO (EB)

"KMO welcomes Charles Eisenstein back to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss his new book, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition. Charles talks about interest and the economic imperatives that it fosters. If the value of money decreased over time rather than growing via interest, then it would be clear to everyone that the best thing one can do with one's money is to spend it quickly and close to home. In times of chaos and potential collapse, the best way to preserve wealth is to give your money away to those in need. Music by Inspired Flight."

Mr. Storck on Money

The Errors of the Economists: What is Money?

What If...we stopped using money? by Keith Farnish (EB)

But money as a facilitator of exchange seems to be necessary for a society which has a greater differentiation of labor. While I do think we should adopt a simpler way of life, it is not apparent to me that a barter system could enable the development of the polis and more advanced cultural institutions like the university.

Money

as a marker or facilitator of exchange that promotes the well-being of the community, or as a tool for power, or the ability to satisfy one's desires?

It cannot be separated from the question of (the right to) property?

Good Debt, Bad Debt by David Korten

Good Debt, Bad Debt
David Korten explains the logic behind a debt-based money system—and why it isn't working in the United

David Korten, The Illusion of Money

Yes!

What has intrinsic value because is an instrumental good, benefits us in some way, versus something that has a derivative value, a value only because we value it?

MacIntyre on money
John Cornwell
20th October 2010 — Issue 176
The influential moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has long stood outside the mainstream. Has the financial crisis finally vindicated his critique of global capitalism?

(via John Médaille)

Time for a new theory of money

Ellen Brown, Yes! Magazine 

 

By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities. The reason our financial system has routinely gotten into trouble, with periodic waves of depression like the one we’re battling now, may be due to a flawed perception not just of the roles of banking and credit but of the nature of money itself.

Reforming Seigniorage: the Key to a Sustainable Economy

Eric Zencey, History News Network

Chances are that unless you’re a total financial wonk, you’ve never heard the term “seigniorage.” But you should, because doing the right thing with it could help solve several major, interrelated problems.

(original)

Public Discourse: Beyond Sovereignty: Money and its Future Samuel Gregg, March 05, 2010

Is it time to consider internationalizing or privatizing our money supply?

The right to health care

And one's responsibility for taking care of one's health--

One has a duty to take care of one's body and one's health; both for one's own sake, and for the sake of others and for the community at large. Sin taxes may not be unjust, because those who engage in vicious behaviors that are detrimental to their health put on an additional burden to the "health care system." Moreover, their behavior should be discouraged, since they are making themselves physically unfit members of society.

Libertarians may believe that government should not legislate to curb bad behaviors, but traditional conservatives and Catholics [should] believe differently? This however does not give the government license to micromanage or to replace the judgment of the individual with rules that cannot but be general and thus fail to take into account different individual cases. For example, in the case of temperance, who else but the individual can judge whether one has eaten enough? Who can determine what suffices? What law can possibly substitute for prudence's governing of a particular appetite? Better knowledge of nutrition can help prudence, but can guidelines and regulations replace prudence with respect to eating, the drinking of alcohol, and so on?

Even if one does not "own" one's body, as the libertarians may believe, this does not mean that it is owned by someone else (except, perhaps, God). Similarly, that a citizen is a part of a whole and, as a member, has duties to the community does not entail a state being totalitarian.

A community may have an interest in the bodily well-being of its members, since those members are not mere private individual but are members of that community. (They are not tools for some abstract public good, but they nonetheless contribute to each other's flourishing.) Still, the primary responsibility of maintaining health fall on the citizen.(Those who are under the authority of another because they are incapable of exercising authority over themselves will also have their health supervised?)

For the sake of the following discussion, I'll assume that there is some right to health care (I am not convinced that there is):

If one has a right to health care, can it also be said that one has a duty to maintain it? If an individual fails to take care of his health, and is culpable, can his share of health care be reduced? How can he be held responsible for his actions if the state intervenes to make him healthier? Unless he is to shoulder a greater financial burden for his health in the future? Similarly, does a right to health care give the state a right to manage his life and ensure that he does not become a drain on public resources?

It seems to me that health cannot be regulated (that is to say, transgressions cannot be punished) except after an individual fails to take proper care of himself; either he gets sick because of lifestyle choices (eating too much) or he fails to attain some fitness standard (for example, as a member of the militia). What sort of positive incentives to stay healthy are possible, other than health itself?

Conversely, if the government is responsible for health care expenditures and makes payment out of the public treasury, how can it not require that people live up to their responsibility and avoid bad habits? How can it not punish (not necessarily with rationiong) those who make poor decisions regarding their body and health? How can it not distinguish between those who are afflicted with illness through no fault of their own and those who are responsible for their bad health? Would it not be unjust for the government to pay for the care of those who do not take care of themselves with taxes on those who are responsible?

As for the obesity epidemic, what if it can be shown that it is largely due to bad nutritional guidelines put forth by the government and other experts?

Miscellaneous links:
http://www.naturalmoney.org/short.html
http://www.naturalmoney.org/full-theory.html