Public Discourse

The Boy Scouts’ new policy allowing openly gay members will fall to aggressive gay rights activists if not first to its own incoherence.

The oral arguments on Proposition 8 at the Supreme Court suggest that there is very good reason to believe that the declaration of a “right” to same-sex marriage will set us on the path to polygamy.

We cannot embrace same-sex marriage and live in continuity with our past as a civilization. To embrace it is to deny that tradition, revelation, reason, and nature have any authority over us.

If the HHS mandate is enforced, our government may provoke a schism in the American Catholic Church and will reduce faithful Catholics to second-class citizenship.

In the classic Christmas film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the humane society of Bedford Falls is built on conservative principles, not contemporary liberal ones.

A “Fantasy Slut League” created by high school boys in California suggests the reality of natural law even in those minds whose view of sexuality has been distorted by our culture.

Charles Kesler’s new book shows that President Obama’s grandiose progressive ambitions, like those of his progressive predecessors, accord neither with the American character nor with human nature.

Is inequality the cause of our worst social ills?

Praise for Bill Clinton’s recent address at the Democratic National Convention overlooks the fact that his promiscuity and perjury as president make his presence there a scandal.

Though many liberals are eager to denounce regulations of the right to vote as “voter suppression,” requiring citizens to show that they can cast a properly-informed ballot ensures that the right to vote, like other rights, is exercised prudently.

The Supreme Court should be an apolitical institution dedicated to enforcing the minimal and clear requirements of the Constitution.

Machiavelli’s advice to princes holds important lessons for Mitt Romney if he is elected president.

Birtherism survives as an unreasonable surrogate for the public discussion that the left has stifled.

Liberals and conservatives alike often complain hypocritically about judicial activism. If we are to avoid letting judicial activism become rule in favor of whatever causes justices approve, then we should make the presumption of constitutionality a basic principle of judicial review.

Given the legal principles involved in recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages, it’s hard to see any coherence in President Obama’s statement.

Libertarians and conservatives should not allow their differences to impede political cooperation against the common adversary: egalitarian liberalism.

The Occupy Movement should be an occasion for the American left to rethink its own moral crusades, which turn out to be morally corrosive and hence incompatible with any serious commitment to social justice.

The negative side-effects of contraception are often ignored in our public discourse, but a truly free decision to use or not use them—and whether to use government to promote them—depends on a frank acknowledgement of their costs along with their alleged benefits.

Morally responsible, prudent voting seeks to defend the common good to the extent realistically possible, even if that means only preventing further damage to an already highly degraded culture.

If marriage is to be preserved in the present struggle, our task is to sort through the influential kinds of arguments about same-sex marriage and abortion that have been introduced by Justice Kennedy.

Though racial and religious profiling offends our better feelings, it is nevertheless constitutional.

The Supreme Court has helped to foster a culture that encourages the sexual exploitation of children.

A recent appellate court ruling in favor of a Westboro Baptist protester shows the decline of judicial ability to protect decency standards for public discourse.

The balanced budget amendment would rob the federal government of an essential power.

The attempts by both the right and the left to politicize our Constitution must be firmly rejected for the sake of our nation’s health and prosperity.

Public recognition of unions contrary to human flourishing will hurt, not help, the happiness of those who participate in them.

America has an obligation to look after its own interests.

What exceptionless moral norms are we willing to discard for the sake of a good cause?

Though Christmas is a religious holiday, secularists should appreciate its great contribution to Western Civilization: the lesson that all men are equal in their fundamental human dignity.

Laws regulating immigration are analogous to those requiring the payment of taxes or the licensing of physicians. Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants is not in itself unjust, but it may be imprudent.

To stimulate job creation, Democrats favor government spending and Republicans favor tax cuts, but is there a more direct way?

Both realists and idealists should cast off cold neutrality and take up friendship’s warm embrace.

Liberal intolerance is rooted in a secular disregard for the dignity of individuals, coupled with the veneration of Progress and the belief that liberal ideologies can’t win in public debate.

It is natural and good to have loyalty and love for one’s own.

Attempts to promote judicial restraint have failed to rein in a judiciary run amok. Is it time to consider more drastic measures?

Kagan’s advocacy for a living constitution should kill her Supreme Court chances.

Our failure to engage in substantive political debate can tempt us to write our opponents out of the political community.

Promoting a sexually permissive pop-culture in the Muslim world gets the true foundations of ordered liberty wrong. In defining our ideals by rejecting our enemy’s, we go from one extreme to another, and miss the virtuous mean.

The claim that health care reform “made history” highlights how fully the political debate hinges on ideas of progress.

Are we prepared to acknowledge the moral stakes in Obama’s new push against “Don’t ask, don’t tell?”

A political scientist explains why the concept of “strict scrutiny” is alien to the Constitution and why it poses a threat to a constitutionally defensible judicial review.

As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of the Species, it is time to realize that the best way to honor his legacy is to fight its over-extension and misapplication into the realm of politics. The second in a two-part series.

As we celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, it is time to realize that the best way to honor his legacy is to fight its overextension and misapplication into the realm of politics. The first in a two-part series.

Calls for health-care reform confuse the basic right to healthcare and a desire for healthcare that is in all ways equal.

Popular music shapes us and our culture, but not only through its lyrics.

If we take seriously what is said by Plato and Aristotle, then we must also pay attention to what is being said by the likes of Taylor Swift and Kanye West.

Opposition to the CIA interrogations of terror suspects is not a reason to distort important Constitutional principles.

Debates over health care reform have focused almost exclusively on policy. Few have considered whether Congress even has the constitutional authority to enact its proposed reforms. Fundamental constitutional issues—such as the scope of the commerce power, the right of individuals to religious liberty, and the different natures of federal and state authority—must be recalled in order to have a more fruitful debate.

Those who see the movement for same-sex marriage as today’s civil-rights struggle are abusing historical reason and our national institutions.

Regardless of who prevails in the argument over marriage, the politics of denunciation practiced by same-sex marriage supporters will have damaged the public discourse.