In the beginning there was Wendell Berry.
The seed—well, a seed—from which Front Porch Republic sprouted was an October 2003 Liberty Fund conference in Savannah, Georgia, dedicated to the thought of the Kentucky poet-farmer-novelist-essayist-prophet.
All was collegial and bibulous—with Jeremy Beer and Jason Peters on hand how could it be otherwise?—until one of the final sessions, when a pleasant woman, an academic who was, shall we say, not in complete alignment with the Berry-lovers around the table, opined that Berry Road led straight to the Khmer Rouge.
Talk about a trigger!
Many things, among them friendship and a few books—but no replay of the Cambodian genocide, thank God–grew from that weekend in Savannah. One offshoot was a March 2007 conference on “Liberty, Community, and Place” held in Charlottesville, Virginia, and sponsored by ISI, which is to say the independent-minded Jeremy Beer. The ghost of the late-onset radical decentralist Thomas Jefferson, he of the ward republics, perfused the air, as new friendships formed and existing ones deepened.
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Bill Kauffman
