- November 29, 2023
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Introducing America After Dobbs: A Public Discourse Resource
Interviews
- October 26, 2023
- The Human Person
- October 26, 2023
- Culture, Human Dignity, Interviews, Polarization
Politeness is manners, it’s technique, it’s etiquette, it’s behavior, it’s at the superficial, external level alone. But civility is a disposition of the heart. It’s a way of seeing others as our moral equals and treating them with the respect that they’re owed and deserve.
- September 28, 2023
- Politics & Law, The Human Person
- September 28, 2023
- Conservatism, Interviews, Politics
These desires—freedom, virtue, and safety—were the underlying impulses of the libertarian, traditionalist, and national security elements of the “fusionist” conservative movement during the Cold War era. And, it seems to me that when you look at it this way, you will recognize that these yearnings persist on the Right to this day.
- August 17, 2023
- Sexuality & Family
- August 17, 2023
- Culture, Interviews, Sexuality
“My book is based on a series of dangerous ideas that have led us to where we are now. Beginning with the insidious theories of John Money, these ideas progressed through the fields of psychology and psychiatry and eventually infiltrated our educational and legal systems—corrupting many of the country’s most powerful institutions.”
- July 20, 2023
- Education & Culture
- July 20, 2023
- Art, Christianity, Culture, Fine art, Interviews
That’s really what I want out of this whole project: for us to see that it’s all saying something, whether it’s a cheesy T-shirt, or a simple country church building, or a medieval cathedral. I want us to really pay attention and ask, “What is it saying? What is true and good and beautiful in what it’s saying, and what is not?”
- June 15, 2023
- The Human Person
- June 15, 2023
- Healthcare, Human Dignity, Interviews, Medical Ethics, Science, Sexuality, Transgender
We align with people who are pro-reality, who respect core community values such as truth and honesty, and who see the human being as a whole: body and soul. There is no metaphysical “gendered soul” separate from the body. Teaching body dissociation to kids (“born in the wrong body”) has led to a tidal wave of self-hatred, body dysmorphia, depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
- April 20, 2023
- Sexuality & Family
- April 20, 2023
- Interviews, Marriage, Natural Law
Micah Watson and Ryan Anderson look back on his Piers Morgan interview, how the debate on same-sex marriage played out, what that might mean for our debates on transgender ideology, the nature of political discourse in America today, the future of the conservative movement, and what to look for in the next decade.
- March 17, 2023
- Business & Economics
- March 17, 2023
- Capitalism, Economics, Interviews
Key Founders believed that America’s future was to be a polity in which free and dynamic commerce would play a powerful role in defining society, as opposed to, say, the priorities of aristocratic or feudal societies. The “republic” side of this political economy equation is that this commercial society would operate within the context of institutions and sets of virtues that draw upon classical, religious, and moderate Enlightenment sources.
- February 20, 2023
- The Human Person
- February 20, 2023
- Abortion, Interviews, Medical Ethics
It’s very rewarding to practice excellent women’s health that is collaborative, integrated, holistic, and listens to their bodies. Children are not STDs. Fertility is something to be collaborated with rather than suppressed.
- February 2, 2023
- Politics & Law
- February 2, 2023
- Censorship, Christianity, Conservatism, Constitutional Law, Interviews, Marriage, Religion and the Public Square, Voting
“What I see in modern America is something maybe a little bit different than what other folks see. I think the nation vis-à-vis its laws is far more just than it has been at virtually any point in its previous history. Racial discrimination is outlawed de jure. You have an extension of the First Amendment to all American communities. You have greater religious freedoms in a concrete way than we’ve ever enjoyed in the history of the United States. We have a lot of problems, but we’re better than we’ve been.”
Book Reviews
- November 5, 2023
- Education & Culture
- November 5, 2023
- Book Reviews, Literature
The phenomenon now arising around Fosse’s work, crowned by his widely honored and beloved Septology, supports the thought that the novelistic tradition’s centuries of exploring this tension have not yet come to an end. Fictionists of faith in the twenty-first century—far from being marginalized, suppressed, or silenced—face a wider horizon for hope and for endeavor than many may have ever dreamed of seeing. What remains to be seen is what writers will choose to do with such a vista of freedom.
- October 23, 2023
- Politics & Law
- October 23, 2023
- Book Reviews, Politics
Surely one way of fending off the Right, a way that does not involve waiting for a charismatic savior, is to reject policies that are destroying American cities. There is not an iota of criticism of such tendencies of the contemporary Left in Brown’s book; yet she would like to assure us that the next leftist charismatic leader will be animated by an ethic of responsibility.
- October 9, 2023
- The Human Person
- October 9, 2023
- Book Reviews, Catholicism, Religion and the Public Square
While a book like John Rist’s is diminished by its flaws, it’s not entirely unfair about our current moment.
- September 27, 2023
- Politics & Law
- September 27, 2023
- Book Reviews, Conservatism
This book illuminates the path the modern conservative movement has taken heretofore and therefore will be an important aid to conservatism’s ongoing quest for self-definition.
- September 26, 2023
- Education & Culture
- September 26, 2023
- Book Reviews, Literature
The first word of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad signals that this is not quite the Homer we’re used to. You may well ask whether anyone today can be used to an epic, conventionally attributed to a blind bard named Homer, that was composed some 2,750 years ago in a stylized form of Greek that no one spoke natively. But surprisingly, there have been more than a dozen translations into English in the past thirty-five years alone.
- September 24, 2023
- Education & Culture
- September 24, 2023
- Art, Book Reviews, Culture, Politics
Hörcher adeptly elucidates how Scruton’s belief in the intertwining of aesthetics, morality, and politics stands as a bulwark against the often fragmented worldview of today’s modern thinkers.
- September 18, 2023
- Education & Culture, The Human Person
- September 18, 2023
- Art, Book Reviews
By co-creating with God, we imitate his goodness, participate in his governance, and bring more of creation into the divine unity.
- September 17, 2023
- Politics & Law
- September 17, 2023
- Book Reviews, Politics
The liberal tradition is an ongoing conversation in which participants speak in a wide range of accents, reflecting the various “nouns” to which speakers are committed: liberal individualists and liberal communitarians, liberal nationalists and liberal internationalists, liberal believers and liberal skeptics, liberal socialists and—yes—liberal free marketeers.
- September 12, 2023
- The Human Person
- September 12, 2023
- Book Reviews, Culture
At the moment, large language models are nothing like us, however easy it is for us to anthropomorphize their outputs. But as AIs develop, it will become increasingly necessary to ask: How much do we want them to become like us? Answering that question will certainly require human wisdom.
Long Reads
- November 9, 2023
- Politics & Law, The Human Person
- November 9, 2023
- Disability, Human Dignity, Long Reads
By using such a broad understanding of disability, and therefore limiting conversation about other social, environmental, or economic factors, the state can both absolve itself of needing to provide real policy solutions and proclaim itself the protector of a victimized class.
- October 5, 2023
- The Human Person
- October 5, 2023
- Culture, Long Reads, Modernity, Religion
There is no romance without the real presence of God, no sacramental imagination without the sacraments, and the wonders of fantasy cannot be asserted of primary reality itself.
- September 7, 2023
- The Human Person
- September 7, 2023
- Long Reads, Religion
For Newman, the discovery of any reasonable political settlement would first require what both the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk and the Oxford Movement had hoped to do: prepare the public imagination for an apostolic church, an institution in which obedience without mental slavery was married to liberty without self-will.
- August 3, 2023
- Education & Culture
- August 3, 2023
- Education, History, Liberal Arts, Long Reads
We need to study history as a subject in its own right, acquiring a deep appreciation for the story of Western civilization, with all its abysses of failure and all its deservedly celebrated achievements. We need to help our students understand old texts at a deeper level, in less anachronistic ways. Above all, we need to arm them against the hostility to their own tradition that has become such a destructive force in our culture.
- July 5, 2023
- Sexuality & Family
- July 5, 2023
- Long Reads, Marriage, Motherhood
Prioritizing support to homemakers who care for children and the elderly is not only the right thing to do—it’s also a smart economic decision for the federal government.
- June 8, 2023
- The Human Person
- June 8, 2023
- Abortion, Long Reads
We will never offer our beloved sisters the ghoulish pseudo-compassion of the abortionist’s knife. We will offer, instead, the healing balm of genuine compassion, compassion born of love, compassion that offers, not a quick and easy, but deadly, “solution,” but rather an open-ended, open-hearted, self-sacrificial commitment.
- May 14, 2023
- Politics & Law
- May 14, 2023
- Long Reads, Philosophy, Polarization, Politics, War
The New Right’s embrace of the “politics of war” is utterly reckless. No amount of friend–enemy Manichaeism or state-of-emergency governance will transform American pluralism into moral unity.
- April 5, 2023
- Sexuality & Family
- April 5, 2023
- Bioethics, Long Reads, Transgender
Conservatives should oppose “gender-affirming” surgeries with a positive account of human freedom ordered towards the goods that make freedom a blessing rather than a curse.
- March 3, 2023
- Education & Culture
- March 3, 2023
- Long Reads, Philosophy, Polarization, Technology
Present-day Americans are a people consumed by anger—an anger that rests on deep pools of sadness, isolation, loss, and fear. In spite of his reputation for dry, unemotional logic, Thomas Aquinas has a great deal to say about the way in which disordered passions can undermine our capacity for getting at the truth. His work can teach us how to resist the vices encouraged by social media, pursue truth in concert with others, and achieve rational disagreement.
Newsletters
- November 24, 2023
- November 24, 2023
- Public Discourse
Tension is something we at Public Discourse strive to handle well. Ours is a voice of reason, moderation, and calm even as storms swirl around us. The kind and thoughtful operation of reason always leaves peace, not awkwardness, not lingering tension, in its wake.
- October 27, 2023
- October 27, 2023
Such technocratic management, incapable of moral action, is, I suggest, what Magerman notes at Penn. But, alas, it is true of far too many of our institutions and those who manage them. Not so at Public Discourse, however, and not so for those educated in older, richer, wiser traditions of moral reflection and judgment—and thus of action. Our essays this past month are full of such riches.
- October 18, 2023
- October 18, 2023
Conflict is underway. Even already, so early in what could be a protracted war, the suffering is profound, the loss grievous and terrible. Things are almost certainly to become worse. It’s only natural, only human, to blanch at such pain, to avert one’s eyes, and wish for it to cease. But such sentiments, so natural and understandable, do not obviate the need to understand, deliberate, and judge according to the rule and demands of justice.
- September 29, 2023
- September 29, 2023
- Public Discourse
Back-to-school reflections, plus a roundup of this month’s essays
- August 26, 2023
- August 26, 2023
- Public Discourse
Reflections on college drop-off and the centrality of kids to the human experience - plus, a roundup of this month's essays
- July 30, 2023
- July 30, 2023
- Public Discourse
A welcome from the new managing editor, plus a review of this month’s essays.
- July 1, 2023
- July 1, 2023
- Public Discourse
Rather than sandlot games and diving contests, June is, for us, a month of contested visions about the body, about sex, gender, race, birth, and death. Perhaps the poet was wrong in declaring April the cruelest month—perhaps that title should go to June.
- May 27, 2023
- May 27, 2023
- Public Discourse
Nature has to be understood and respected for people to be happy.
- April 29, 2023
- April 29, 2023
- Public Discourse
Public Discourse continues to believe that a free and flourishing society is possible. But it depends on the hard work of strengthening our roots—marriage, families, communities, and institutions. We do this work not because we want things to be fixed in place, but because without healthy roots we’ll be thwarted in the task of lifting our sights to the true and the good.
