A Glimpse into the American Mosque
A new book of essays by 45 American Muslim men provides a timely response to popular anti-Shariah rhetoric by showing that American Muslims love their country and their fellow citizens.
Abortion and the Courts: Judicial Nominations Are Imperfect but Matter
Criticism that Republican justices have only hurt the pro-life cause is misguided, because Republican presidents from Reagan onward have deliberately tried to advance judicial conservatism through federal court appointees—a commitment that has brought victories both for judicial conservatism and the pro-life cause. The second of a two part series.
Abortion and the Courts: A Brief Political History of Judicial Conservatism
Legalized, unrestricted abortion can’t be blamed on conservative judicial policy just because Republican justices voted for it. Judicial conservatism as we now understand it came after Roe. The first of a two-part series.
Support the Work of Public Discourse
A note from the editor.
Getting Dignity Right
Michael Rosen’s effort to clarify the history and meaning of dignity ignores Christianity’s important philosophical contributions.
Surrogates and Their Discontents
Governor Christie’s recent veto of a bill that would lower restrictions on gestational surrogate mothers should prompt us to consider surrogacy’s harmful effects on mothers and children.
Metaphysical Business
Work is at the core of our humanity, and our ownership of what we produce precedes laws demanding that we give it back to “community” in the abstract.
Honoring an Early Pro-Life Democrat
Ellen McCormack’s 1976 presidential campaign offers today’s pro-lifers a valuable example of incrementalist strategy.
Do Sports Build Character?
The recent Penn State scandal reminds us that if sports are to instill moral character, we must approach athletics first as an education in the virtues, not as an avenue to fame and wealth.
Religion: Moving Beyond Emile Durkheim
For Emile Durkheim, God and religion were nothing more than the idols of the tribe and the tribe’s own self-worship; why do so many Western intellectuals take this as the last word on the subject? The second in a two-part series.
Religion as a Community-Bonding Fiction
Although religion and God-belief are in some sense an illusion for Jonathan Haidt, they are seen as an often salutary fiction insofar as they help people to overcome their self-centeredness and direct their efforts to a greater collective good. The first in a two-part series.
The Power to Destroy
The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act is constitutionally correct. This doesn’t prevent us from seeing the individual mandate as a tax on freedom—an exercise of Congress’s constitutional power to tax so as to destroy personal and institutional freedom with respect to health insurance.
What Can We Learn from the Stem Cell Debates?
A report from The Witherspoon Council, a newly-formed bioethics body, argues that even the noblest aspirations of the scientific enterprise must be guided by ethics and governed under political authority.
Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View
The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.
Experts and Virtuosi: A MacIntyrian Case for Excellence
True authority plays a necessary role in our moral lives, and, when it is distributed according to respectable standards of excellence, it ennobles both those who direct it and those who are directed by it.
Liberal Love and Sargent Shriver
It’s far too easy when bickering about this or that policy, and particularly when the policy is morally charged, to miss the values modeled by good men and women when we disagree on the means.
One Man, One Vote, One Culture: In Defense of Towns
We require goods on a human scale, including our political communities.
