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Voting at Public Discourse

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Americans are just a month away from choosing our next president. Voting is a great responsibility, and we at Public Discourse seek to inform readers with a variety of viewpoints and arguments all coming from thinkers who share our basic moral commitments.
Confessional

Why Voting for Biden Isn’t Necessarily a Sin—And Why That Matters

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While I do not intend to vote for Biden, I am adamant that a Christian may in good conscience vote for him so long as it is not because of the evils he supports. Recognizing this fact is crucial for those who care about Christian witness in a fallen world. When our moral witness becomes entirely tied to prudential political judgments, we swap our faith in a transcendent redeeming God who offers us salvation for a politician or party who promises to create heaven on earth.
I Voted Sticker

A Christian Case for Not Voting for Either Presidential Candidate in 2020

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The duty of Christians is to be the soul—even more specifically, the conscience—of our civilization. The options this November, and the trajectories they promise, are not acceptable, and in choosing between them we risk forsaking our calling by soiling our witness.

The Ethics of Voting

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What moral calculations should determine how we vote?

Moral Truth and the Ethics of Voting: How Should I Vote?

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Voting always requires a weighing of consequences. The paramount question for the conscientious voter in 2016 is, “Which outcome among the feasible alternatives will promote the greatest good or prevent the greatest harm?”
Public Discourse

In Defense of Voting Regulations

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Though many liberals are eager to denounce regulations of the right to vote as “voter suppression,” requiring citizens to show that they can cast a properly-informed ballot ensures that the right to vote, like other rights, is exercised prudently.
Lincoln memorial

The Real Mover of “the Civic Bargain”: A Review of Manville and Ober

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Self-interest in a democracy is not necessarily an evil. It only becomes an evil when democratic government grows so intrusive in ordinary life that self-interest can only be interpreted as a kind of dissent from a general—but now all-pervasive—good.
Donald Trump swearing in ceremony

Is Donald Trump Disqualified from the Presidency? A Response to Matthew J. Franck

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People have a right to protest supposed electoral fraud even if they are obviously and verifiably wrong. They do not have the right to commit violence. No one has the right to commit violence in a political cause. But not all political violence is insurrection.
Donald Trump

Is Donald Trump Disqualified from the Presidency?

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The country is divided. Many people support Donald Trump, and many revile him. Whatever is decided on his eligibility, or his criminal culpability in federal and state prosecutions, large numbers of people are going to be very unhappy.
ethics advice column

Ask Chris Tollefsen: An Ethics Advice Column

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I’ll certainly offer advice—my best account of what seems reasonable in the situation. But it is only advice: everyone who writes needs to make an independent assessment about whether the guidance I offer is sound.
Divided America

Conservatism and Identity Politics: A Review of George Hawley’s Conservatism in a Divided America

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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.
Watching the news

Subsidiarity and the Ethics of Attention

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If our immediate surroundings and concrete responsibilities constitute the arena in which we are most uniquely competent, then reserving our attention for those objects is not quietism, but the pinnacle of activism.
Voting day

For the 2024 Election, We Must Relearn to Be Citizens

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As 2024 approaches, there will be tremendous temptations to go still further in taking the gloves off in an attempt to prevail by any means necessary. There will be power at stake, but also tremendous profit as the purveyors of opinion seek to build audiences and sell advertisements. But we are not helpless. We can be more fair to each other and thus create the conditions for a more fruitful discourse.
Hand of a person casting a vote into the ballot box during elections

There’s No Easy Fix to Our Broken Presidential Nominating System

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For the foreseeable future, there will be no institutional barrier to demagoguery, viciousness, or incompetence to be found within the nominating processes. The only barrier will be the voters themselves.
Unidentified young demostrator with megaphone and notebook protesting against austerity cuts

Graduate Student Unions and Catholic Social Thought

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Since the first social encyclical, Rerum novarum (1891), the Church consistently has taught that forming unions is a natural human right, an expression of the right of association and a right that governments may not deny.
Loving young African mom and her cute little daughter eating a healthy fruit snack together in their kitchen at home

When Moms Lean Out, Government Should Lean In

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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.
Democrats vs republicans are in a ideological duel on the american flag. In American politics US parties are represented by either the democrat donkey or republican elephant. animal shadows on flag

The Tribal, and Philosophical, Basis of the Left and Right in American Politics

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In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum and Verlan Lewis certainly succeed in proving to the reader that the pieces within each ideological bundle have shifted over time and do not inevitably go together, but they go well beyond that in concluding that each coalition’s bundle is fundamentally random. Though labels and coalitions may be quite movable, at any given time (including now) ideological identifications can tell us something intelligible about our politics.
Photo of Ryan Anderson and Micah Watson

Ryan Anderson on a Decade of Debates, the Future of Conservatism, and a Time to Grow

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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.
Background image of voting booths decorated with American flags at empty polling station

Democracy Can Be Trusted Because Citizens Can Be Trusted

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What you think about democracy probably comes down to what you think about the nature of your fellow citizens. What are they like? Are they children of God, made in the image of their Creator and thus in possession of common sense and common reason? Do they have enough sense to distinguish between truth and falsehood on the issues that drive our current political conflicts? Or are they ignorant bumpkins?

Augustine Isn’t the Political Pessimist You Think He Is

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Michael Lamb’s A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought is an important intervention not only in Augustine studies, but also in our politics of stagnation and hopelessness. Lamb shows that if we hope rightly, we can work in and for the pilgrim city and for earthly cities. Augustine’s descriptions of life’s evils and turmoils should awaken us to life’s uncertainties, our lack of self-sufficiency, and our need for mercy.
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.”
The United States capitol building in Washington DC on a summer day with its flag waving in the wind..

The Congressional Fight over the House Speakership Was a Good Thing

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The long debate over who should be speaker was a healthy expression of Madisonian transactional politics, and it had helped illuminate the path toward restoring the People’s House as the seat of American self-governance.
woman absorbed by her cell phone

Modern Man Is Psychologized, Sexualized, Politicized—and Digitized

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While the digitized promises of meta-man may entice us, they are ultimately false promises based on a rejection of fundamental aspects of human embodiment. There is an integrated wholeness to man that requires both resting in the givenness of human identity and actively engaging with the world.
People voting election poll

Religion Is Good for Democracy, but Is Democracy Enough?

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For Robert Wuthnow, the purpose of democracy is not to arrive at some perfectly blessed country but instead learn how to contest—not resolve—our differences through organizing, argument, elections, and voting. Fair enough. But that seems too thin a conception of democracy, one that really puts too much faith in the democratic process as such.
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