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Public Discourse

College Athletics and the Common Good

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If we looked at actual young men and women, and not abstractions, we might begin to think of other things besides the ratio of members of each sex participating in this or that activity. We might think about love.
Public Discourse

Why Fight For Marriage?

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We are all called to defend marriage so that the truth can change hearts, minds, and lives. As the early pro-life activists did, we must invest the long-term political, legal, cultural, and spiritual capital to win down the line. The final installment in a three-part series.
Public Discourse

Philosophy and a Life Well-Lived

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The next generation of true culture-makers will be shaped purely by bad philosophy if its arguments go unanswered. As individuals and communities, we will be swayed by moral thought no matter what: the only question is whether it will be well thought out. The second in a three-part series.
Public Discourse

Reason and Revelation: Why Christians Need Philosophy

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Many Christians question the value of philosophical arguments for conjugal marriage, preferring to appeal to revelation. But our natural moral knowledge in some ways precedes revelation and helps us to understand it. The first of a three-part series.
Public Discourse

Is “Sex Worker” a Legitimate Phrase?

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Contrary to the rhetoric of sex-worker advocacy groups, the vast majority of women working as prostitutes did not freely choose to do so. Human trafficking is a serious problem, and those who attempt to downplay its prevalence often have ulterior motives.
Public Discourse

Liberalism’s Biggest Lie: If You Like Your Morality, You Can Keep Your Morality

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The unchecked progress of sexual liberalism means that we cannot say what kind of moral culture our children will inhabit as adults or, accordingly, what kind of moral culture will form our grandchildren. No responsible person can support such a movement.
Public Discourse

Being at Home in the World: Burke, Paine, and Modern Politics

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The differences between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine shed light on contemporary politics, argues Yuval Levin in his new book. But they also shed light on something deeper: two fundamentally contrasting orientations toward the world.
Public Discourse

What a Progressive Used to Be

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In the past, progressives fought to defend the family because they understood that families protect us from the atomization and amalgamation that isolate and control us.
Public Discourse

Women and Children First

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Men and women struggling with infertility know real heartache. However, as citizens of a country founded on the struggle for rights and freedom, Americans have a civic and moral duty to confront laws that marginalize the already marginalized and threaten to create a second-class citizenry.
Public Discourse

Abortion: A Public Issue

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Contrary to the judgment of the Supreme Court, abortion is not a private issue. It snuffs out the existence of a member of the human community—a person like us with a radical capacity for reason and freedom.
Public Discourse

Conservatives and the Constitution

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Conservatives must resist the temptation toward “big-government conservatism.” Easy acceptance of extra-constitutional federal powers betrays the philosophical roots of the conservative movement.
Public Discourse

A Moral Basis for Markets: A Response to James Stoner

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All truly voluntary exchange should be allowed without state interference. But many exchanges that are not fully voluntary should be allowed, too. It is immoral to restrict the ability of market processes to create a space where right action is rewarded and immoral actions are punished.
Public Discourse

The Pro-Life Movement, Forty-One Years After Roe

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The pro-life movement has won a great battle by convincing the American public that an unborn child is a person. But that is not enough. Now, we must make an ethical argument against the horrific injustice of abortion.
Public Discourse

Is There a Moral Basis for the Free Market?

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The morality of the market, important as it is in a free society, is not the only kind of morality that matters in common life.
Public Discourse

Metaphysics and the Experience of God: The Meditations of David Bentley Hart

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The embrace of a materialist and mechanistic view of the world, taking its inspiration from the rise of modern science, results in a loss of the sense of transcendence. But God is not simply some finite object in a universe of other objects—he is reason, being, and order itself.
Public Discourse

The Mother-Free Money Tree

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If we believe that human beings should not be for sale and should not be trafficked or manufactured like products, and if we believe that women deserve better than to be treated as mere baby machines, then we must oppose third-party reproduction.
Public Discourse

Marriage Matters, and Redefining It Has Social Costs

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What is marriage, why does marriage matter for public policy, and what are the consequences of redefining marriage? Adapted from testimony delivered on Monday, January 13, 2014 to the Indiana House Judiciary Committee.
Public Discourse

No Interest in Fathers

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President Obama’s enthusiasm for emphasizing the importance of fatherhood is an encouraging development. Unfortunately, the president has undercut this message with his own policies.
Public Discourse

We Need a Real Women’s Agenda, Not Government-Funded Abortion

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By passing HR 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, Congress could settle the matter of federal funding for abortion once and for all, and start addressing the real needs of American women. Adapted from testimony delivered before the House Judiciary Committee on January 9, 2014.
Public Discourse

The State Marriage Defense Act

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The age in which all states were united in understanding marriage as the exclusive union of man and woman for life has passed away. Now, new legislation seeks to protect the right of each state to define marriage for those who reside within its borders.
Public Discourse

Sugar and Spice and … Sex-Selective Abortions?

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Advances in prenatal testing and in vitro fertilization are making it easier and easier for Americans to act on their preference for male children when birth rates are low. If the US is to avoid a destabilizing gender imbalance, we must ban sex-selective abortions.
Public Discourse

Theology, Anthropology, and Economics

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Every economic system is based upon an implicit vision of the human person. Maciej Zieba’s new book provides an introduction to Catholic social thought that examines the anthropologies of Catholicism, liberal democracy, and the free-market economy.
Public Discourse

Sex, Drugs, and Religious Liberty

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Same-sex marriage may pose a grave threat to religious liberty, but the cultural conditions and assumptions that make that threat possible are rooted in heterosexual behavior and the idea that everyone has a right to consequence-free sexual intimacy.
Public Discourse

Our Obligations to Animals

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Because animals are not truly our equals, advocating that we should treat them as such weakens the pro-life cause. But animals are meant to be part of our households, and the way we treat them should express beauty and virtue, not decay, pride, and domination.