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Public Discourse

Diagnosing Our American Illness

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The irony of Obama’s presidency, with its ambitious calls for “hope” and “change,” is that circumstances have assigned him the duty of presiding over the last days of the old regime. Our postwar political order, it seems, has sown the seeds of its own dissolution.
Public Discourse

Europe, Multiculturalism, and Nihilism

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Europe can only emerge from its downward spiral by putting religious faith and respect for history and tradition at the center of our communal and personal lives.
Public Discourse

What is the Actual US Divorce Rate and Risk?

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It is important that those who care about the state of the family have a realistic view of its strengths and weaknesses. Considered carefully and understood properly, statistics about divorce can offer us one important part of that picture.
Public Discourse

Our Great Sexual Adventure: Where Does It End?

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Though the sexual revolution’s stock is still rising, at the end of the day, this great adventure is going to end right back where it started: in classical sexual restrictions.
Public Discourse

Donald Trump: At Home in Postmodern America

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Donald Trump is not a conservative—he’s a reality TV star thoroughly in tune with the passions and dynamics of mass publicity and social media. No matter how much he denounces them, he’s still a product of victim-based identity politics.
Public Discourse

Infinite Wallace: Tragedy, Comedy, and Faith in the Life of David Foster Wallace

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Perhaps the greatest tragedy of Wallace’s life is that—for all his brilliance—he could never fill the dry void in his life with the waters of meaning.
Public Discourse

Christians, Capitalism, and Culture: A Response to David Bentley Hart

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Instead of engaging in sweeping condemnations of contemporary capitalism, those concerned about the present state of Western culture should focus upon the theological and philosophical errors shaping our time.
Public Discourse

Corporations are People, Too

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The contemporary left’s extreme anti-corporation position is hostile to the traditional legal culture of American liberty, which advances the common good by protecting the rights of both individuals and formally organized groups of people.
Public Discourse

Collateral Damage: Same-Sex Marriage, Private Religious Schools, and Parental Rights

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Same-sex marriage endangers not only religious liberty, but also the school choice movement. We need new laws to protect schools from being forced to adopt sexual orientation nondiscrimination policies in order to be eligible for voucher, tax credit/deduction, or educational savings account programs.
Public Discourse

Toward Plural Marriage: Understanding and Countering the Liberal Wringer

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Anyone interested in defending marriage and family life must first expose the built-in biases and hidden moral teaching within the contemporary liberal perspective.
Public Discourse

No Room for Sanity at the Inn: Stifling Democratic Debate over Same-Sex Marriage

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Democracy and common sense teach us to seek the truth by listening to one another. If we will not even provide a room for people who want to talk with one another because we do not like what they say, then democracy is impossible.
Public Discourse

Justice Kennedy, Henry David Thoreau, and the Children of Gays and Lesbians

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Both the majority opinion in last summer's same-sex marriage case and recent public statements point to a troubling lack of coherence in Justice Anthony Kennedy's thinking.
Public Discourse

On Human Sexuality, Conservative Victory is Inevitable

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The emotional and physical devastation produced by the collapse of familial bonds may take decades to fully manifest itself. Once it does, the essential human need for restrictions on sexuality will again become clear.
Public Discourse

Crybullies Aren’t Just for College: On Corporations and LGBTQ Political Correctness

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Calls for “Safe Spaces” on campus don’t just threaten the future of academia. The same mindset seeks to silence dissent and respectful disagreement in business as well.
Public Discourse

Why ISIS Might Win, Even If It Loses

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If Western culture continues to be defined by the pitiful desire to go on living in as much physical comfort as possible, we will continue to be victimized and oppressed by the much more powerful appeal of radical Islam to die for God and eternal happiness.
Public Discourse

The New Dignity: Gnostic, Elitist, Self-Destructive Will-to-Power

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In a world with no clear origin, no purposeful end, and no intrinsic meaning, human dignity is founded on nothing more than a self-creating will to power that is, in the last analysis, self-destructive.
Public Discourse

The American Dream in Crisis: It’s Time for a New Moynihan Moment

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The American Dream is in crisis because the American family is in crisis. We must commit to a national—not purely governmental—effort to promote strong families.
Public Discourse

Rights Through Obligations: The Case of Free Speech

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Some rights are grounded in the need for agents to fulfill their perceived responsibilities, including their obligation to pursue knowledge. This obligation, along with the communal nature of inquiry, supports a right to free speech that acquires particular stringency in those communities where inquiry is most essential.
Public Discourse

Could America Survive without Religion?

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Can freedom survive in a society in which most citizens believe that human beings, who are supposed to have inalienable rights, are merely material beings inhabiting a universe of purely material and efficient causality?
Public Discourse

Anti-Zionists Misread the Bible

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The authors of the New Testament never eliminated distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, but they did prophesy a world to come centered in Jerusalem.
Public Discourse

The End of Europe

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Unless Europe is willing to affirm, defend, and promote its roots, it has no future beyond a dystopia of non-judgmentalism, managed decline, and increasing religiously inspired violence.
Public Discourse

Substantive Due Process: What is the Question, and Why Does It Matter?

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In debates over marriage and abortion, we should make arguments based on constitutional texts and judicial precedent. But would it be legitimate also for judges to consider overarching questions of justice and natural law?
Public Discourse

Uncivil Discourse, Part Two: A Call for Intellectual Humility

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To rehabilitate our public discourse, we each need to cultivate more self-awareness about the potential weaknesses and limitations of our own proposals.
Public Discourse

Uncivil Discourse: Modern Media’s Ideological Junkspace

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Political discussions in the public realm have become increasingly shallow: something more akin to a children’s mud fight than the rational discourse America’s founders hoped would characterize the civic life of the American republic.