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reading novels

The Bookshelf: Eros and Dystopia

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It seems the utopian impulse and the dystopian nightmare are never very distant from one another. If we are to love Big Brother, as Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s novel, all our other loves must be intruded upon, damaged, even sacrificed entirely. The case for freedom begins with the case for love.
couple holding hands

Of Mice and Alpha Men

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I won’t resort to the “be yourself!” platitude or argue that anyone should unleash the waterworks on a first date. However, I will suggest that the relationships (particularly romantic ones) that alleviate despondency cannot be cultivated while adhering to manifestos and maintaining derogatory views of the opposite sex. And that applies to both women and men. 
family

From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, March 2024

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The truth lurking inside the great morass of opinions, questions, and fears about the human condition is that a confluence of factors leads to greater personal, familial, and communal flourishing.
pregnancy and fertility

Problematizing Fertility, Normalizing Disease

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Our bodies cause great inconvenience. Nothing about menstruation, ovulation, or having children is convenient, after all. But it’s the way we were created, and there are better ways to respond to the sexual asymmetry of men and women. What are we losing out on if we suppress it?
statute depicting a person lamenting/grieving

Social Wounds, DEI Advocacy, and the Good of Lamentation

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There are reasons for hope available to us all, believers or not, but the possibility of lamentation as a form of prayer provides an especially potent way of ensuring that lament is enlivened by hope rather than rendered morbid by despair. 
seedling symbolizing hope

A Reflection for a New Year

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The antidote to despair is not perfect politics, an impossibility, a mere ideology; the cure is hope. Moral panic reveals despair at the state of things: craving the fullness of the kingdom of heaven now, but upon discovering decadence and depravity—and who can deny our time’s troubles—responding with the sadness of despair. Despair cannot be overcome with certainty or perfection, but only by hope and the truth of concrete action undertaken in the light of hope.
Nativity Scene

Chesterton’s Christmas

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In “The God in the Cave,” G.K, Chesterton explains that when Christians celebrate the Nativity, they are celebrating an event that changed the course of history and permanently transformed the DNA of human society.
Alexandra Hudson, The Soul of Civility

Discovering the Soul of Civility: An Interview with Alexandra Hudson

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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.
Homeless

The War on Poverty at Fifty: How to Craft Policy to Help America’s Poor

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Government may be able to provide material assistance, but it has failed to address the deeper causes of poverty. Worse, it has discouraged the most important defenses against poverty in America—work and marriage.
family

Modern Families and the Messes We Make

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Assistive reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization not only involve serious medical risks, they also disrupt family life and commodify human beings.
Francis of Assisi

Francis of Assisi, Father of Modernity

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Francis of Assisi teaches us that those who want to embrace the joys of this life must also embrace suffering. Our forgetfulness of this truth could explain the current crisis of our civilization.
Devorah Goldman and Dr. Miriam Grossman

How Gender Activists Defaced Pediatric Medicine: An Interview with Miriam Grossman, MD

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“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.”
Summer camp

Summer Camp: An Ailing American Institution

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The original rationale for summer camp is more valid than ever. Young people are struggling with mental health, addiction to technology, disconnection from the body, isolation, and many other painful realities. Summer camps cannot fix these problems. But for many adolescents, the experience of traditional summer camps might help them see that life is about more than accomplishment, and that is a start.
Technology

The Psychology of Digital Dehumanization

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A Web of Our Own Making overflows with disquieting observations about the ways digital technology is reshaping human nature. Antón Barba-Kay puts into haunting words the anxiety, exhaustion, and emptiness that most of us feel but cannot put into words because we are too busy scrolling and ogling.
Three girls riding down the street on scooters and a bike

Yes in My Backyard—and in My Frontyard

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Being pro-family must also mean being pro-housing reform. If we want more neighborhood children playing in our front yards, we should be pushing their elected officials to make it easier for developers to build, baby, build.
Closeup image of a woman writing on a blank notebook on the table

From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, May 2023

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Nature has to be understood and respected for people to be happy.
Riot police clashed with the protesters.

A Coalition of the Sensible: What’s Wrong with “The New Right”

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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.
Two young hitchhikers walking along the road

The Three Principles of Reactionary Feminism

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An honest reckoning with women’s interests today calls on us to reject the cyborg vision of sexless, fungible homunculi piloting re-configurable meat suits. The cyborg era began with women, and women must reclaim the power to say “no.” In its place, we can pioneer a new but ancient moral consensus. We can lead the charge for solidarity between the sexes.
China's Great Hall of the People

The Law Under the CCP Is a Sham

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Talking about the rule of law in a place like China (more specifically, CCP-occupied China) is as absurd as talking about traffic regulations in the wilderness. The so-called law is the law of kings, wielded at whim. Only ending authoritarianism, establishing the balance of power, and respecting the rule of law will stop the government from being a tool of the CCP’s desires and evil aims.
Bathroom symbol male female

Why States Must Define Sex Precisely

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There are several ways to define sex precisely. Any good definition will capture the central concept of biological sex—the orientation of male and female bodies for reproduction. It will also refer to what happens under normal development while accounting for disorders. Finally, it will accommodate the fact that organisms have and do different things at different stages of development.
Uniform buildings on a college campus

An American Tragedy: On the Suicide of Liberal Education

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Life’s biggest questions are almost never resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and if we don’t study the differences between the Epicureans and the Stoics, between Locke and Rousseau, and between legal originalists and non-originalists, we are missing out on our own music: sometimes a battle of the bands, sometimes cacophony, always fascinating.
Two gold rings on wooden

Gay Marriage, Civil Rights, and Christian Virtue: An Interview with David French

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“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.”
Bnei Brak , Israel - October 18 . 2018: The interior of the synagogue Brahat ha-levana in Bnei Brak . Israel . Designated congregation and the altar.

The Legacy of Living Jews

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Instead of focusing on what the world has done to the Jews, it is far more worthwhile to investigate the way Jews have not only survived, but thrived.
Painting of the pilgrims

What the Puritans Can Teach Us about American Exceptionalism

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Perhaps as we modern Americans experience a cynical hangover after the giddy confidence of the “unipolar moment,” revisiting the Puritans’ nuanced notion of what it means to be an exceptional people can bring needed perspective, and restrain us from falling for triumphalism or despair.
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