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Public Discourse

A Lethal Legacy: Hurricane Katrina and the Indignity of Euthanasia

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A new book tells the harrowing story of Memorial Medical Center, where some physicians took the lives of their patients during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Public Discourse

Western Land Policy and Natural Property Rights

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The principles of natural law and the right to property could help overcome the dysfunction that has paralyzed land management in the western US.
Public Discourse

Marriage, Marketing, and Intimidation: “It is up to you, fearless reader, to act.”

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Proponents of same-sex marriage haven’t won in the arena of ideas—they have won through manipulation and intimidation. Those who oppose them must speak up.
Public Discourse

Lessons for Pro-Lifers from the Supreme Court of the Philippines

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The Supreme Court of the Philippines recently overturned components of that country’s “reproductive health” bill. What can the US pro-life movement learn from this ruling?
Public Discourse

Religious Liberty and Economic Freedom: Intellectual and Practical Paradoxes

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The role of economic liberty in contributing to human flourishing and the common good remains deeply underappreciated, even by those who are dedicated to religious liberty.
Public Discourse

Twenty-Five Years After Tiananmen: China’s Fight for Human Rights

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A government that cannot face its own history is a government without a future. Memory and truth will give the Chinese people the courage to speak out for democracy, and Americans must join in the fight. Adapted from remarks delivered at the American Enterprise Institute.
Public Discourse

Egg Freezing: Beating Biology and Buying Time, But at What Cost?

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Egg freezing does not really beat biology. It buys a small chance at giving birth, but at a very high price indeed.
Public Discourse

Can Science Tell Us When Life Begins?

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“Science” can tell us when life begins, provided that we already know what to look for. Empirical biology alone cannot tell us what that is. Once we establish a metaphysical account of life, then empirical embryology can tell us whether the relevant conditions are met.
Public Discourse

Building Strong Marriages, One at a Time

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If healthy marriage is the basis of a strong society, it is worth every effort to strengthen it. Marriage education should supplement other efforts to address social problems.
Public Discourse

The Supreme Court on Prayer

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Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Greece v. Galloway is the Court’s best piece of Establishment Clause work in decades—and a happy omen for religious liberty in our country.
Public Discourse

A Fight Worth Having: Classical Liberalism vs. Authoritarian Progressivism

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What threatens human flourishing today are governments inspired by authoritarian progressivism.
Public Discourse

Brown v. Board of Education Turns Sixty

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The new world of civil rights turns the old one on its head.
Public Discourse

Fusionism As Foundation

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Fusionism is not merely a form of coalition building. It provides a common language for the broader conservative movement and a positive vision for the future of the country.
Public Discourse

Why Harvard Was Right Not to Ban the Black Mass

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A policy that disempowers university officials from prohibiting student events on the basis of the viewpoint they express demonstrates institutional genius.
Public Discourse

Marriage and Witness: What’s Going on at Notre Dame?

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The University of Notre Dame is unwilling to bear an “uncompromising witness,” as Pope Francis challenged it to do, to the moral truths of marriage and sexuality. This is a subtle but certain pastoral failure on the university’s part.
Public Discourse

Life on the Academic Animal Farm

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Dehumanizing others through censorship does not befit the academy, but the pigpen.
Public Discourse

The Devil Went Down to Harvard

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Ideas should never be banned from an academic community, even if some find them offensive. Yet some actions and events are so hateful that they tear at the fabric of a community.
Public Discourse

Unintelligibility: The Starting Point for Discussing the Science-Humanities Relationship

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Paradoxically, to speak intelligibly about the matters that concern them, contemporary intellectuals must appreciate the unintelligibility of the world in which those matters take place.
Public Discourse

Premature Talk of Surrender on Same-Sex Marriage

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Conservatives must defend marriage for both principled and practical reasons. The Republican Party cannot surrender the cause of marriage without also surrendering the cause of life.
Public Discourse

Just Inflation

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A low but predictable inflation rate is sound, just policy.
Public Discourse

Abortion, Slavery, and Constitutional Meaning

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Abolitionism provides the example for how to fight for a cause: underscore the humanity of those whose humanity is denied, provide compassionate care for those affected, name the lies that dehumanize and kill, and tirelessly argue for the truth about “who counts.”
Public Discourse

Marriage Equality and the Bible: Why All Forms of Marriage in the Old Testament are Not Equal

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The only form of marriage that existed before the fall was between one man and one woman. The narrative trajectory of the Old Testament shows that all other versions were the result of sin.
Public Discourse

Do Ideas Really Have Consequences?

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To view practical agreements between Aristotelian-Thomist foundationalists and contemporary anti-foundationalist liberals as “progress” is to fiddle while Rome burns.
Public Discourse

All the Single Ladies, Married Men, and… Everyone Else: Resisting the Mentality of “Total Work”

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Balancing career and family should not be framed as a women’s issue. All people—male or female, married or single—must draw boundaries between their work and their personal life, for their own good and the good of society.