Also, just to be clear, these aren't my brother's claims or views at all.  They are 100% mine, based on my own observations, and I don't pretend to speak for him or any other seminarian or priest. 

To be sure, I'm not saying I'm an objective observer by any means. But these are people I've met, conversations I've had, things I've witnessed (and not just in D.C., but again, with seminarians from other dioceses)--which is a lot more direct and recent than "I heard from a guy who heard from a guy who heard this 30 years ago," which is the only side that seems to get aired in discussions of American seminaries.  People can take it with a grain of salt; I've disclosed what my interest is. My goal is simply to make sure that this other side--the very good things that are happening, the very rigorous evaluations that are taking place, the very impressive young men who are answering the call to the priesthood--are part of the dialogue, so that people don't hear only one very misleading (and largely outdated) description. Then people can conclude whatever they want--but hopefully with the benefit of fuller information.

Also, the fact that I have a relative in the seminary is no motive to try to cover up for any malfeasance; if anything, it would make me more worried about the possibility of malfeasance. I mention it only to disclose the source of my direct knowledge of the good things that are happening in the seminaries (as an alternative to "I heard stories...").

And, yes, there is a lot of baggage remaining from decades past. But again, the rising generation of priests is very good; the younger priests in this diocese and in others are very good; to make no mention of them in a hit piece on America's seminaries is to leave out a very crucial perspective.

The way the paragraph is constructed, everything that follows from the mention of TC suggests that Washington is what's referred to, and it's good to dispel the notion that DC is a cesspool, since that's clearly what's implied through lack of clarity.  If it was about a bishop who moved elsewhere, that should have been stated, along with the diocese to which he moved.  This is the problem with "I heard from some guy that he knew some guy who knew a bishop who was bad."  Names, dates, places, spelled out, on the record, please.  "I read no public reports, but I heard stories" is not a sufficient basis on which to draw sweeping, harmful conclusions about a massive institution representing millions.

And more broadly, the post makes no mention whatsoever of the good things that are happening in the seminaries in the Archdiocese of Washington and other places that take their missions very seriously. Yes, there are places still struggling to clean up, but ADW is less the exception than the rule. Rahe's post is dated in past decades; information about what's happening now is needed to balance a very misleading picture.

It almost doesn't seem fair that so much professional success should accrue to Bill, given that he's already been blessed with one of the most beautiful families you'll find anywhere--his amazing wife Julie and their three lovely daughters. But only almost; this is well-deserved indeed, and congratulations are certainly in order for both the McGurns and the New York Post.  Cheers, Bill!

See also this, from NRO.

I actually think Biden was driven to the "my dad is folksier than your dad" spat by insecurity. He doesn't bring much else to the ticket besides his "working-class kid from Scranton" persona. Putting aside the fact that his youth was neither as hardscrabble nor as Scranton-based as he's portrayed it, Biden must be panicked now: Here's an authentically midwestern-nice guy from Wisconsin who actually is still pretty connected to his roots (unlike Biden, who was in the Senate so long and such a creature of it that his flesh presumably fused with his Judiciary Committee chair). Here's Ryan, who still does normal-guy things like hunt and fish and root for the Packers.  Here's Ryan, who, in addition to being vastly sharper than Biden (a huge point of insecurity for the VP), might actually just beat him at his own average-dude-charisma game. Hence Joe's perceived need to prove that he really had the most down-home upbringing of them all.

For what it's worth, were I a Texan, voting for Cruz would have been a no-brainer.  From everything I know about him, he seems terrific. It is just possible to like intelligent, principled conservatives and to find the current "anti-establishment" mania in Republican politics troublesome.

Indeed.  The Little House books are not exactly calibrated to today's political sensitivities or the overly fragile imaginations of today's highly programmed children. All the more reason to read them to and with your kids! Adults (and some children) may also benefit from reading Wilder's non-fictional account of her life, which is going to be released next year.  Pioneer Girl was her first stab at an autobiography, and (as Hill notes in the aforementioned book) was the basis of the Little House series. Something to look forward to.

[Continued]: Mr. Edwards, too, has several unkind things to say about his interactions with Uncle Sam. And Almanzo openly disparages the regulation of homesteading as inefficient and incompetent.

In other words, the view of Washington that comes across in the Little House books is a disdainful, distrustful one. The federal government is too far away, too slow, too ignorant of life on the frontier to manage the pioneers' lives competently; when it interferes, the results are usually stupid and disastrous.

The homesteading "bet," by contrast, is understood to be a proper relationship between the citizen and the state: The government has land it wants settled. It lets the pioneer--the citizen who has superior knowledge of the particular land in question, as well as the skills needed to cultivate it--do the work of development. It is the classic distinction between "hand up" and "hand out"; of recognizing when the American people know something better than their government, and entrusting them to do that work. Of course in practice it was often a debacle, but it did work well in many cases, and the theory is at least in keeping with a much healthier understanding of the "government program."

On the matter of the Ingalls family's relationship with the federal government--the point taken up by Ursula/Mama Toad/et al.--yes, it was indeed complicated!  But the theme that comes across all the books is one of frustration with the feds.  In Little House on the Prairie, Pa does indeed move the family into Indian Territory, on the understanding that the location had been approved by the federal government.  When that information turns out to have been in error, he is of course furious. Upon receiving word that all of the settlers in their area will be forcibly removed by the federal government, he exclaims: “I’ll not stay here to be taken away by the soldiers like an outlaw! If some blasted politicians in Washington hadn’t sent out word it would be all right to settle here, I’d never have been three miles over the line into Indian Territory. But I’ll not wait for the soldiers to take us out.  We’re going now!”

And in These Happy Golden Years, the girls' Uncle Tom recounts being deprived of property and the fruits of extensive labor and risk-taking at gunpoint by federal troops.

[Continued]: The danger on the right, I think, is to rebel against state overreach by emphasizing too heavily the strength and capacity of the individual.  It is certainly essential to a healthy, self-governing society that each person take care of himself as much as possible, and that he deeply desire to do so, and to avoid being dependent on others (this is the self-reliant ethic I described in the piece, that LIW and other pioneers had in abundance). But community is an absolutely necessary complement to that, and today's right tends to overlook this.

These two visions also existed in tension out on the frontier, to be sure.  And that tension manifests itself in the stories of the west that have come down to us.  As a wise friend and colleague pointed out to me recently, it's the contrast, for example, between the cowboy and the settler/farmer: between the person who wants to "go it alone" on the open prairie and the person who wants to establish community and civilize the frontier.  Think of the Farmer v. Cowman conflict in Oklahoma. (Or just read histories of the western settlement.)

As for the thread taken up by Todd/DrewinWisconsin/The King Prawn/Tom Lindholtz: Yes, what it boils down to is the proper relationship between the individual and the community and the state, and how we understand the correct role of each. It is indeed a smear to say that the right places all faith in the individual and the left in the community; in fact, the leftist project is to hollow out all the space between the individual and the state (understanding "community," as others have pointed out here, to be interchangeable with coerced collective government action). Much of the domestic policy of the Obama administration can be understood through this aim.

The right--or at least a healthy conservatism--has always understood the unique responsibilities and importance of civil society, of the relationships between neighbors and service organizations and churches and the other bonds of community.  They cannot simply be replaced by government programs; the state does not do these things better or more efficiently as a grand benevolent administrator of human affairs (the theory that animates much of the left's desire to see this activity located within the sphere of government responsibility).

Thanks to Bill and everyone for the very kind comments about the essay.  I'll try to go through and answer various questions/points raised.

First, on the Lane/Wilder authorship question: John Walker is right that the precise balance of writing and editing is "difficult to determine."  I recommend Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life, by Pamela Smith Hill, for more insight into the professional relationship between mother and daughter. Hill seems to think that, while Lane certainly had an influential role in shaping and marketing the stories, the authorship was solidly Wilder's.

There is something very close to a primer: the Jim Capretta essay in National Affairs excerpted (but not cited or linked to) in this post. For those interested in reading the whole thing (which David Brooks recommends in today's NYT), a direct link is here.

Troy, you forgot about his deft touch with humor.

スツーさん、高校のとき、私も東京に住んでいました。　日本が大好きですよ。ポドカーストを聞くありがとございます！