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The majority of parents are very angry about everything that has happened—not just the masking, not just the closing schools, but the combination of all of that. And it’s the fact that the people on the school boards, and Democratic politicians, by and large, just refuse to admit that this was wrong, and that it had consequences. And when they refuse to do that, why on earth would anyone vote for them again?

The continuity between administration and teaching for me has always had to do with the question of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual development of young people. Finding creative ways to meet students where they are and draw them into the most important questions is a source of endless fascination for me. When it comes to education, it may be the case that, as Alasdair MacIntyre argues, the only way to carry on sustained debate is from within and between rival traditions, assuming, that is, that members of a particular tradition are genuinely interested in engaging perspectives quite different from their own.

“I want to give people hope, people living with mental illness as well as family members of people living with mental illness, that not only can they survive their illness, but they can also reach their greatest potential. Sometimes, in fact, they reach their greatest potential not despite the illness, but because of the illness.”

In 2020, China became the world’s number one box-office market. For years, the Chinese Communist Party has been using this economic leverage to shape the content of American movies.

The debate over whether it is grace or nature that directs human beings towards the beatific vision was one of the most contentious intra-Catholic theological disputes of the twentieth century. David Bentley Hart’s 2022 You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature shows that the debate is alive and by no means merely academic and inconsequential—pantheism, tradition, orthodoxy, and heterodoxy are all very much at stake in the argument.

We are not isolated individuals, free to create our own moral codes and obligations based on our preferences, desires, self-identifications. We enter a world already tied up with pre-existing relationships, duties, and obligations. These are basic principles of conservatism. Given the drastic environmental changes awaiting future generations, conservatives ought to start considering climate change a top priority.

The age of digital media has unleashed a profoundly threatening human experiment. By drawing us to waste not only our time, but our attention, social media seduces us to waste our souls. Our brightest engineers have trained our most powerful technology to act with the psychological craftiness of demons. Neuroscience helps us understand how digital media is changing us, but we need a more classical language about the soul to understand, and protect ourselves from, the most ominous of these changes.

Given that there are natural sex differences, it’s no surprise that those differences include some tendencies that can cause problems. This is true for both men and women. Yet the tenor of contemporary academic discussions about men, such as in the discourse about “toxic masculinity,” is much more negative. Properly understood, however, the problematic tendencies within the male condition actually present opportunities for virtue. Thus, they can form the foundation of a positive conception of manhood centered on the virtues of gentlemanliness, moral courage, and chastity.

When Christianity enters a society, it provides an understanding of inherent and equal human dignity that lifts up those whom that society has considered unworthy. But what happens when Christianity recedes? Christian human dignity is not founded on maximizing fairness or autonomy, but on the fact that all human beings are made free and in the image of God. If it becomes detached from that principle, then human dignity no longer makes sense.

As spring settles in, with ball games and tulips and dogwoods in bloom, it pays to turn off the news, to ignore the blather and chatter and anger. We should remember that we conservatives are deeply at home in the goodness of the world. There is a season for everything, including a season of hopefulness for life and its promise.

Like all human things, war ought to be ordered by law and moral norms. In these selections from the Public Discourse archives, we see neither arguments for or against war, nor policy prescriptions on options for Ukraine, but first principles are never irrelevant.

Public Discourse has hosted arguments about the Court since the publication’s inception. Here, from our archives, are some essays which remain timely, and which might provide some needed perspective on the role of the Court, originalism, and the role of morality and natural law in the Court.