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Ask Chris Tollefsen: An Ethics Advice Column

For one thinking clearly about the issue, the incrementalist approach is not only permissible, but obligatory, a matter of justice to those unborn human beings who can, but otherwise will not, be saved.
A religious attitude, even if only a general one, is essential to marriage; it is therefore no surprise that marriage is declining in the West as religiosity declines.
Most Americans will not begin adopting avelut practices in any kind of wholesale manner. But it offers insights into the human condition that may nonetheless be helpful—about the timing of the grief cycle, the need to honor the departed free from distraction, and how communities might adopt robust mourning structures to support those who are suffering. 
When it comes to children’s health, ideology should never override evidence. Children who are distressed about their biological sex need evidence-based care that facilitates their journey to adulthood, keeping them mentally and physically intact.
As the experience of many nations around the world shows, constitutions are easily dissolved, and constitutional order lost, when citizens allow their leaders to violate their charter to achieve partisan goals. When that happens, the delicate system of checks and balances usually gives way to an oppressive one-party rule. 
If we are to understand how it is possible for someone to pursue the subjectively satisfying in such a way as to disrespect a good possessing a morally relevant value, we have to realize that in man live two mighty tendencies that are incompatible with value-response: pride and concupiscence.
Many of the causes championed by the New Right are worthy ones. But a prudential calculation made in good faith, and which refuses to compromise on principle, is something quite different from the enthusiastic advocacy of positions that contradict principle entirely or the embrace of ideologies that are fundamentally anti-religious.
Living for others is hard for everyone, in any stage of life. And in a culture that exalts the autonomous self, it is hard to remember that sacrifice is the only path to flourishing.
These essays are not provided out of callousness or a lack of empathy, but if we are to be responsible, we must be well-informed so that we can judge and choose in keeping with the truth of things.
Love your neighbor as yourself—contra Holloway, the “Golden Rule” ethic makes for morally serious, honorable, and practical foreign policy considerations. What it needs, however, is an actor or agent—a willing agent—who has the moral backbone to respond. As with individuals, so it is with nations: to whom much has been given, much will be required.
Readers, respect not the friends, critics, or even the judgments of posterity that insist on a book’s greatness. Enjoy what you read, and if you’re not enjoying yourself, stop, close the book, and go read something else.
Readers will find in this book an insightful and witty commentary, suitable both for the serious student of the poem and for the layman reading it in translation. If it encourages anyone to read Virgil with fresh eyes or for the first time, it will have served its purpose.  
We must love mother and child alike: there is no other path to true “reproductive justice.” 
Smith's book is an excellent reminder that conservatives should never prioritize an idealized individual or nation. Rather, we must work to preserve those institutions that point us to better lives.
Like all secular revolutionary movements of the modern age, wokeism is a religion in denial. We will only put an end to the cycle of violent political revolution if we return to the Christian religion that gave birth to our civilization.
Christians should always make the best of any pragmatic agreements they can find with non-Christians on any issue. But the evangelical reasons why we support, for instance, constitutional government should be made clear, not veiled in embarrassment by translating them into the idiom of natural law or human dignity out of a misguided concern to avoid blurring the boundaries between political and religious affairs.
Haidt’s work points us toward reclaiming childhood. Let’s go further and reclaim our humanity.
I agree with Professor Charles that a decent and just approach to politics must be informed by this elementary moral rule, even in the realm of international relations. At the same time, it is also important to note that the application of the parable to a problem like the Ukraine war is not as simple as Charles’s account suggests.  
Rana’s history prompts us to reflect on how we ought to conceive of American identity and defend the Constitution’s anti-majoritarian checks and balances in the twenty-first century.
The enduring source of the Children of Israel’s exceptional, future-oriented natalism is their intense, equally exceptional rootedness in their shared past.
Dying is part of life, but most people dread their final days. The end of life, which often takes the form of protracted terminal illness, can involve significant pain and suffering as well as functional limits in day-to-day living. Is it still possible for human beings to flourish at the end of life?
Unfortunately, Morson looks only at a handful of symptoms that are vaguely comparable to the pathologies of late Soviet society and concludes that the same disease is at work. He does not address the deep causes of Soviet and Russian dysfunction, all of which are absent in the United States—authoritarianism, a command economy, censorship, oppression, terror, the Gulag. 
If anyone older than Homer used the bird’s nest motif in a figurative sense, I have been unable to find it. His evocative imagery may seem familiar to modern readers, but this is deceptive insofar as it makes us think of the changes on the horizon for the parents whose primary child-rearing responsibilities are complete.
My interest is not in striking a blow either for or against Basham and the like-minded folks who feel empowered and justified by her claims. Rather, I want to talk about why I think the book is important and how a more expansive framework might help us understand the strife and atmosphere of suspicion more accurately.