TAC’s outgoing Executive Director reflects on defending the familiar, the family, and faith in God.
Editor’s note: Emile Doak will be stepping down as TAC’s Executive Director at the end of 2023. For the announcement from TAC’s Board Chairman, click here.
I’ve long thought that the policy positions that have distinguished this magazine from its right-of-center brethren are all connected. At its best, our commitment to foreign policy restraint, a humane economy that ennobles American workers, and a robust and unabashed social conservatism stems from our recognition that these priorities are the best way to advance that which matters most in life. They are really just a manifestation of deeper, more fundamental values. There’s a reason I quote our founding editorial too often. A “taste for the familiar, for family, for faith in God” is a fairly accurate summation of my politics.
As a conservative, I don’t like change. Right after college, I married the only girl I’d seriously dated. My wife and I settled in the heart of our hometown, with both our families right down the street. We were both relatively new arrivals to the Church that Christ founded, myself a convert and my wife a revert. So we strove to find a vibrant Catholic parish and get involved. “A taste for the familiar, for family, for faith in God.”
It was not long after we settled in our hometown that I joined TAC. The magazine gave me the opportunity to explore my dispositional preference for familiarity at an intellectual level. I sensed that there was something restless in the American ethos, something that chafes against rootedness, and I didn’t like it. I wanted to make sense of my desire to stay in my hometown—which was all the more complicated by the fact that Herndon, Virginia, is hardly Mayberry. In many ways, Northern Virginia is the quintessential rootless place. The region receives plenty of new arrivals eager to shake off the dust of their own hometowns and start a new life, whether those towns are as close as the Northern Neck or as far as the Northern Triangle.
One of my early essays for TAC was a reflection on this tension, “What to Do When Suburbia Is Your Hometown.” Looking back six years later, it’s a rather rambling piece with no clear conclusion. There’s longtime TAC columnist Bill Kauffman making the case against leaving one’s hometown:
And if we are disloyal to our place, to the place our ancestors made, then why should our children show any loyalty to us?
…and Christopher Lasch making the case against the suburbs:
The case for the suburban way of life as opposed to the small town or the old-style city neighborhood cannot very well rest on the claim that it promotes a sense of community.
But what to do when suburbia is your hometown?
A couple years later, I took to Front Porch Republic to mount a defense of my hometown, “Toward a Somewhere Suburb.” I argued that despite its economic reliance on the Swamp, Herndon could defy Lasch and foster the sense of community that most suburbs lack:
Herndon is more than bedrooms and garages. It’s a town with residents who care about the local peculiarities that differentiate it from surrounding suburbs, providing a sense of local pride that is so necessary to flourishing civil society. It’s a town whose reemerging historic core and civic events reflect, to borrow from Robert Nisbet, a quest for community.
But even then, four years ago, I think it’s safe to say my characterization was more aspirational than accurate. And since, the Washington Metro has extended through Loudoun County, bringing a dizzying amount of development to the region. Herndon has not been immune. The reemerging historic core is slated to be developed into some mixed-use monstrosity at the cost of a core civic event. I don’t like change.
Even a good conservative, though, can recognize that the normal order of life begets some benign changes. Not long after I started at TAC, our family started to grow. I’ve welcomed three wonderful daughters to our home while working at TAC. I also lost a son, Gabriel, who was stillborn at 20 weeks. He’s buried in the Herndon town cemetery, across the street from Herndon High School, where 14 years ago I asked his mom to junior prom—our first date.
Our oldest daughter turned five on Friday, and will be starting kindergarten next year. Kids force a lot of decisions on you that even the most prepared parents don’t anticipate. Being entrusted with forming another soul is a truly awesome responsibility. It makes concrete the philosophical questions and cultural battles we debate and fight every day at TAC.
For example, the policy question of “what education system is best for the country’s kids?” is a different question than “which of my limited school options is best for my daughter next year?” As kids get older, the stakes get higher. Our country’s cultural rot unfortunately rules out an increasing number of school options. Fathers are tasked with making decisions that are in the best interest of getting their kids to heaven, often in the face of limited, imperfect options.
So recently, I’ve been faced with another tension. I truly believe the work we do here at TAC every day—which, at its best, can help determine a better future for our country—is vitally important. It also, by necessity, often keeps my daughters’ dad away from home, either at an office 25 miles away or on airplanes crisscrossing the country.
In response, our family has taken to spending weekends together, away from the Swamp, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It’s a familiar place to us. My wife went to college there, meaning I spent many weekends during those formative years driving I-66 West to I-81. We kept up the habit after graduating. The Valley has, in many ways, become like a second hometown to us.
It will soon become more than that. This past summer, I was approached about an opportunity for a significant lifestyle change for my family. Chelsea Academy, a vibrant, faithful, K-12 Catholic school in the Shenandoah Valley, wanted to know if I might be interested in running their foundation.
It’s not an opportunity I was looking for. I don’t like change. But God can lead you places you wouldn’t expect.
After nearly seven great years at The American Conservative, the last three leading the organization as Executive Director, I’ll be stepping down by the end of the year and moving my family to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It’s a truly bittersweet decision—as I wrote when I was fortunate enough to be named to this position, I sincerely believe TAC is a special organization, uniquely situated to play the leading role in guiding the Right through this tumultuous time. I’m humbled to have had the opportunity to lead this vital publication.
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And I’m grateful to know that TAC will continue to thrive. Thanks to our generous supporters, we’ve been able to make significant investments over the past few years that have made TAC a stronger institution than at any time in our now two-decade existence. As our board of directors conducts a search for our next organizational leader this fall, I have full confidence that TAC is in good hands to position the magazine to achieve even greater levels of influence. And I’m proud that we’ve built an organization with strong, scalable infrastructure that will enable my successor to grow this publication for decades to come.
For the past seven years, I’ve been blessed to work for an organization guided by “a taste for the familiar, for family, for faith in God.” For my family, the time is right to live those values more fully in a faithful, integrated community outside the Beltway.
I will continue to guide TAC through the transition this fall, and I hope to see many of you at our Annual Gala on October 26. Come 2024, I look forward to watching TAC continue to thrive—then as an avid reader, member, and supporter.
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
