Diversity and Discrimination in the Case of the Christian Legal Society
Our struggle to identify the sort of diversity that is conducive to a vibrant, participatory, and just society is primarily a political inquiry, not a constitutional one.
Elena Kagan’s Living Constitution
Kagan’s advocacy for a living constitution should kill her Supreme Court chances.
How the New Health Care Law Endangers Conscience
The new health care law has endangered longstanding protections on conscience. We must act to address them or risk creating a dangerous precedent.
Same-Sex Marriage and Formal Discrimination
Another reason the analogy between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage fails.
Health Care, Abortion, and the Call of Conscience
Under the new health-care law, pro-lifers may have to accept inferior health plans, rather than wrongly pay into abortion providing ones.
Fatal Attraction: Democracy and the Welfare State
Expansive and expensive welfare programs have brought European social democracies to the verge of catastrophe. Now the dynamics of democracy may be an impediment to economic reform.
The Gulf Oil Spill and Eco-nomics
Are market economies friends or foes of the environment?
Conservatives, Abortion, and Contraception
More on the red-state blue-state abortion debate: a response to Koppelman, Carbone, and Cahn
Toward a Renewed Culture of Building
An adapted commencement address arguing that traditional building provides us with a durable and beautiful built environment, which in turn provides the best physical and spatial context for the inventiveness and daring that modern life demands.
Politics and Principle
The recent actions of New Jersey governor Chris Christie have stirred up a political storm, but they are a reminder of the principles that underlie our politics.
The Dangerous Vacuity of Our Public Discourse
Our failure to engage in substantive political debate can tempt us to write our opponents out of the political community.
Remembering the Pill
The fiftieth anniversary of oral contraceptives is a reminder of all the things the Pill lets us forget.
Europe’s Monetary Sins
The bailout of Greece is a stunning about-face that calls into question Europe’s commitment to a stable currency.
Interracial Marriage and Same-Sex Marriage
Why the analogy fails.
On Markets and Morals: The SEC, Apple, and Internet Pornography
The recent SEC scandal reminds us of the prevalence of pornography. Steve Jobs’ decision to ban pornography on the iPhone might provide a way forward.
The New Maritainians
Can Thomistic art theory provide an alternative to postmodern “Neutralism”?
Arizona, Congress, and the Immigration Mess
Illegal immigration is a national problem, but Arizona’s solution is not the answer. We need to secure our borders, allow a more generous pathway to citizenship, and create a guest worker program.
Immigration and Self-Governance
Three issues—the right to secure borders, the moral costs of illegal immigration, and the virtues of generous neighborliness and forgiveness—must be clarified in order to address the problems of immigration reform.
Liberalism and Higher Education
Sometimes a defense of shared liberal values can become the partisan promotion of one of liberalism’s strands.
Health Care and the Abandonment of Pro-Life Principle
In a first-time feature, the editors of Public Discourse respond to the editors of Commonweal.
Morality, Rationality, and Natural Law
We should prefer natural law thinking to utilitarianism — here’s why.
The Way of Wendell Berry
Americans know how to talk of progress in terms of consumer goods, individual liberties, and power over nature, but have no use for the language of communal health and the idea of discipline. Wendell Berry provides a way forward.
Pornography and the Muslim World
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.
Exporting Death to Kenya
America’s abortion laws may inspire a dangerous provision in Kenya’s new constitution.
