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Can We Stop Fighting Over Schools?

Most other nations with advanced levels of universal schooling provide public support to faith-based schools with no evident harm to their social fabric and with considerably less conflict over schooling. The time has come for the United States to adopt principled pluralism as the fundamental and equitable structure of our education system.

The Libertarian Case for Drug Prohibition

Freedom isn’t just the bare ability to do something; it is the ability to act under the influence of properly functioning cognitive faculties. If you value freedom, then you should oppose the legalization of recreational drugs.

Transgenderism: A State-Sponsored Religion?

Gender dysphoria is a serious mental health issue. By contrast, transgenderism is a belief system that increasingly looks like a cultish religion—a modern day Gnosticism denying physical reality for deceived perceptions—being forced on the public by the state.

LOL: No Laughing Matter for Catholic Universities

In order to be considered a university at all by those who fancy themselves the arbiters of what counts as knowledge, the Catholic university must abandon its fundamental truth claims and its proper relationship with those entrusted with the proclamation of that truth.

It Stinketh: On the End (and The End?) of the Modern University

The modern university project, as articulated by the American Association of University Professors, is a project of planned obsolescence. Those who continue to proclaim that the principles of free and open inquiry and the marketplace of ideas are alive and well are fooling only themselves.

Swamp Thing: A Qualified Huzzah for the Party Establishment

Even when its nomination process is broken enough to give us such a man as Donald Trump for our president, the party establishment has shown a remarkable capacity to fill the voids created by his inattention and to guide many of his most important policy decisions.

What’s Wrong with the New NIH Study on Transgender Kids?

A new study being launched by the NIH is intended to produce evidence supporting a particular conclusion: that transgender affirmation therapy is safe and effective for gender-dysphoric youngsters. And once the federal government speaks, states and other institutions will fall in line.

The Last Jedi and the Ancien Régime: A Spoiler-Heavy Defense

The arrogance of the Jedi and the Sith needs to be replaced with a deep sense of failure and humility, out of which fruitful service and sacrifice can grow. In this way, The Last Jedi is the Star Wars film we need right now, even if it isn’t the one we want or deserve.

The Mortara Case and the Limits of State Power: First Things Should Disavow Fr. Cessario’s Defense of Pius IX in the Mortara Case

Many people do care—and care a lot—what the editors of First Things think about Christian-Jewish relations, and this time the galloping statism of First Things is doing great damage in the real world. Robert T. Miller calls on R.R. Reno to disavow the position Romanus Cessario takes on the Mortara case and to reaffirm the journal’s historical commitment to the freedom of religion as understood in liberal states.

Can Liberalism Change?

In a paradoxical new book, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla correctly identifies the defects in contemporary liberalism and identity politics but cannot free himself from them.

Practical Reason, Basic Goods, and Natural Law

philosophy, natural law

Reason operating without error judges that no human being should ever intend the death of another human being for any reason whatsoever. No achievable good can justify such a choice. And that is the foundation for the case against the death penalty.

An Open Letter to the People of Iran

The letter below was written by a bipartisan group of past Chairs together with the current Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). They praise the people of Iran for their courage and expressing solidarity with them. In addition, they call on the US government to support the protestors in Iran and to send a clear signal that human rights and the Iranian government’s treatment of dissidents will be at the top of the agenda in any future dealings between the US and Iran.

This letter is a response to nearly a week of demonstrations across Iran. What began as a protest against high food prices and rampant unemployment has broadened into a political movement demanding leadership changes and greater freedom and human rights. The government has responded with violence: more than twenty protestors have been killed, and hundreds have been arrested.

Physicians Cannot Serve Both Death and Life

A physician cannot truly and wholeheartedly work toward bringing his patient to health if he can choose at any time to give up that pursuit and suggest rather that the patient choose death instead.