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Public Discourse

Medicine, Health, and Sexual Liberation: Friends or Foes?

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It is a grave mistake to distort medicine for ideological purposes.
Public Discourse

A Contradictory Man: The Legacy of Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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By taking seriously the thinking of a scholar-politician who transcended the contours of our political divide, Greg Weiner illuminates possibilities for American politics that have been lost with Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s passing.
Public Discourse

The Image of Liberty: What the Roman Empire Can Teach Us About American Politics

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A look back at the disintegration of republicanism in the Roman Empire yields important lessons for contemporary American government. Will we demand actual liberty—including the authority truly to govern ourselves—or be content with its image?
Public Discourse

Scientists Should Tell Lawrence Krauss to Shut Up Already

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Lawrence Krauss’s “argument” for atheism is like that of an artist who confines himself to using black and white materials and then concludes that, since color doesn’t show up in his drawings of fire engines and apples, it follows that fire engines and apples are not really red.
Public Discourse

It’s Time to Get Serious about Infidelity

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Being forced to pretend that infidelity is harmless is an insult to the millions of infidelity victims who suffer under our discriminatory no-fault divorce laws.
Public Discourse

Did The Supreme Court Take Tennessee Courts Out of the Marriage Business?

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For a trial judge, the jurisdictional implications of the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision are not matters of idle speculation. They are pressing practical questions with grave consequences.
Public Discourse

The Limits of Consent

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Consent only has value when it is used to make decisions based on knowledge of what is truly good for us as human beings.
Public Discourse

Contra Mundum Pro Mundo: A Review of The Colson Way

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A new book captures the heart of Chuck Colson’s message: love your country, but love your God more.
Public Discourse

Public Morality and the Lure of Profit

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The liberal campaign to redefine marriage is not over. Attempts to secure constitutional rights to polygamy and polyamory are on the way. Conservatives must pursue a new strategy to thwart private corporations from undermining public morality if we hope to prevent further changes to the institution of marriage and protect other vital elements of public morality.
Public Discourse

What Makes a Society Thrive?

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A collection of essays helps the public understand the elements that make up a society where people can flourish, the reasons for our society’s current problems, and some avenues for potential reform. Below is an adaptation of the editors’ introduction to that collection.
Public Discourse

Ashley Madison and the Problem of Liberal Sexual Ethics

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Liberal attempts to defend adultery demonstrate the internal inconsistency and shallowness of contemporary sexual ethics.
Public Discourse

The Public Case against Human Cloning

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A new report from the Witherspoon Council on Ethics and the Integrity of Science forcefully makes the case against all forms of human cloning. Below is an excerpt from the report on the moral case against cloning-to-produce-children and cloning-for-biomedical research.
Public Discourse

On Abortion, Medical Science is Still Waiting to be Heard

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Judicial overreach and badly flawed constitutional reasoning were not the worst offenses committed by the Roe court. Far worse was its contempt for facts and truth, which left a cultural wound that continues to fester.
Public Discourse

Keeping the Spotlight on Planned Parenthood

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Do not be distracted by misdirection. Do not let the horror of abortion be the main issue. Stick to the pertinent facts: Planned Parenthood is profiting from the sale of fetal parts. Planned Parenthood is routinely violating federal law. Planned Parenthood does not care about women.
Public Discourse

Joys, Struggles, and Scare Tactics: On Down Syndrome and Abortion

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It’s tempting to make neat calculations based on what we know in the abstract about Down syndrome. But once an actual child enters into the equation—with all of his strengths and foibles, quirks and habits—we don’t get the answer we expected at all.
Public Discourse

Assisted Suicide and Our Society of Autonomy

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The individualism required by a society of autonomy shuts down love, dependence, and self-sacrifice. To extinguish grief, we are told, we must extinguish the grieving.
Public Discourse

Donald Trump, George Will, and the Crisis of American Conservatism

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You can’t beat a flawed moral vision with no moral vision. This is not idealism but hard political reality.
Public Discourse

Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death: Belgium’s Brave New Euthanasia Regime

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Belgium has the most permissive euthanasia laws in the world, and one of every twenty deaths in Belgium is now deliberately caused. Suicide is becoming a moral obligation in a culture that promotes euthanasia as a dignified exit that offers relief to caregivers.
Public Discourse

The Inequality Act: Weaponizing Same-Sex Marriage

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If enacted, the deceptively titled Equality Act would punish dissenters, giving no quarter to Americans who continue to believe that marriage and sexual relations are reserved to the union of one man and one woman.
Public Discourse

The Supreme Court’s 2014-2015 Term: The Year the Administrative State Trembled

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The opinions of the Supreme Court’s most recent term indicate that the court’s conservative justices are rethinking the scope and power of the administrative state.
Public Discourse

Is Lying Ever Justified?

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A new book powerfully examines the most important questions surrounding lying and argues that to assert falsely is to commit an act of self-induced practical schizophrenia.
Public Discourse

The Social Injustice Done to Adjunct Faculty: A Call to Arms

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The time has come. If senior faculty members don’t force the issue of justice for adjuncts, no one else will.
Public Discourse

What’s Driving the Marriage Divide?

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Although economic factors certainly play a role in the growing gap in marriage rates between higher income, college-educated Americans and those with lower levels of education and income, the impact of changing cultural mores should not be underestimated.
Public Discourse

The Unreasonableness of Secular Public Reason

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When voters and legislators act on religiously informed moral convictions in making the law, it may entail a blending of religion and politics that is disquieting to the secular liberal mind, but it closes no gap in the “separation of church and state.”