All knowledge comes from sensory experience, including knowledge of the first principles of morality on which the natural law and moral reasoning build.
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The Trouble with Industrial Policy
There are good reasons to believe that industrial policy significantly undermines rather than bolsters the common good.
Should Protestants Reject Natural Law? Responding to Common Objections
Even according to Protestant traditions with the gravest views of sin, fallen human beings do not get everything wrong when thinking about morality. Since Scripture itself affirms that the created order reveals God’s moral law, Christians should not turn their backs on natural law for the sake of promoting biblical teaching.
Isolation Bookshelf: History Outside the Academy
For reasons that pass all understanding, modern academic disciplines are where English prose goes to die. Fortunately, profound and compelling historical writing has a history of its own that predates the modern research university by two and a half millennia, stretching back to Herodotus in the fifth century BC. Such a tradition is resistant to the chloroform of the modern academy, so long as gifted storytellers find publishers and readers.
Judicial Nominees Must Explicitly Acknowledge That Roe Was Wrongly Decided
Roe v. Wade is no secondary issue. It is not something to be pushed to the side of the nomination process. Roe is central. Roe is a window into the constitutional worldview of a would-be justice. It is a measure of their sense of what a justice should be. That is why I say today that I will vote only for Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. Adapted from a speech given on the floor of the Senate by Senator Hawley on June 30, 2020.
Which Americans Are Really “Highly Effective People”?
Thirty years after its publication, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has shaped our culture in significant, lasting ways. Yet many of the upper-middle-class, successful Americans who cultivate Stephen Covey’s habits fail to apply his most essential, all-encompassing principle—the one that guided his entire vision of the good life.
Why Are Philosophers and Theologians So Hostile to Economics?
Bad writing by philosophers and theologians about economics is a moral issue. If their views about economics are taken seriously—as they often are in churches and in policy advocacy—they threaten the life-changing effects of free markets for the poor across the world.
Homer at the Beach
On Calypso’s island, we encounter both the allure and the dangers of the beach. There, Homer brings us right up against a mysterious fact: the fantasy of an undying beach body—even that of a love goddess whose collagen never loses its tensile strength—will not really make us happy. The best kind of lover will have skin in the game: skin that can age, that has aged, that is actively aging before our eyes. To escape the history that is written into our bodies is to escape the meaning, the meaningful struggle, of our lives.
The Church Has the Form of a City
The book of Acts shows that the Catholic Church has the form of a city in which a specific work is conducted. That work of sanctification has its source in the sacrifice of the Mass, which the state must allow the Church to continue celebrating as much as possible. This essay originally appeared in French and is translated here for the first time.
The News Makes You Dumb
We should stay away from the news lest we fall prey to its mania, foolishness, and stupidity. We should read books—difficult books—and be challenged to improve ourselves rather than settle for easy answers.
“Going Dark” and the Politics of Software Code
Apple has been entangled in several recent controversies over its decision to adopt unbreakable encryption for its iPhone. The company has inscribed an absolute right to privacy in its code and, in so doing, has failed to take into account the proper moral and legal limits on that right. Other technological solutions should be considered that could balance the rights of physical security and privacy.
Thought, “the World,” and Education
Inwardness, intellectual or otherwise, is the source and the safeguard of individual human flourishing, without which no community is judged to do well. Individuals must experience their learning as a mode of freedom and spontaneity, not a complex navigation of yet another structure of authority and achievement.