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Public Discourse

A Glimpse into the American Mosque

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A new book of essays by 45 American Muslim men provides a timely response to popular anti-Shariah rhetoric by showing that American Muslims love their country and their fellow citizens.
Public Discourse

Abortion and the Courts: Judicial Nominations Are Imperfect but Matter

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Criticism that Republican justices have only hurt the pro-life cause is misguided, because Republican presidents from Reagan onward have deliberately tried to advance judicial conservatism through federal court appointees—a commitment that has brought victories both for judicial conservatism and the pro-life cause. The second of a two part series.
Public Discourse

Abortion and the Courts: A Brief Political History of Judicial Conservatism

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Legalized, unrestricted abortion can’t be blamed on conservative judicial policy just because Republican justices voted for it. Judicial conservatism as we now understand it came after Roe. The first of a two-part series.
Public Discourse

Support the Work of Public Discourse

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A note from the editor.
Public Discourse

Getting Dignity Right

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Michael Rosen’s effort to clarify the history and meaning of dignity ignores Christianity’s important philosophical contributions.
Public Discourse

Surrogates and Their Discontents

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Governor Christie’s recent veto of a bill that would lower restrictions on gestational surrogate mothers should prompt us to consider surrogacy’s harmful effects on mothers and children.
Public Discourse

Metaphysical Business

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Work is at the core of our humanity, and our ownership of what we produce precedes laws demanding that we give it back to “community” in the abstract.
Public Discourse

Honoring an Early Pro-Life Democrat

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Ellen McCormack’s 1976 presidential campaign offers today’s pro-lifers a valuable example of incrementalist strategy.
Public Discourse

Do Sports Build Character?

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The recent Penn State scandal reminds us that if sports are to instill moral character, we must approach athletics first as an education in the virtues, not as an avenue to fame and wealth.
Public Discourse

Religion: Moving Beyond Emile Durkheim

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For Emile Durkheim, God and religion were nothing more than the idols of the tribe and the tribe's own self-worship; why do so many Western intellectuals take this as the last word on the subject? The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

Religion as a Community-Bonding Fiction

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Although religion and God-belief are in some sense an illusion for Jonathan Haidt, they are seen as an often salutary fiction insofar as they help people to overcome their self-centeredness and direct their efforts to a greater collective good. The first in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

The Power to Destroy

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The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act is constitutionally correct. This doesn’t prevent us from seeing the individual mandate as a tax on freedom—an exercise of Congress’s constitutional power to tax so as to destroy personal and institutional freedom with respect to health insurance.
Public Discourse

What Can We Learn from the Stem Cell Debates?

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A report from The Witherspoon Council, a newly-formed bioethics body, argues that even the noblest aspirations of the scientific enterprise must be guided by ethics and governed under political authority.
Public Discourse

Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View

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The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.
Public Discourse

Experts and Virtuosi: A MacIntyrian Case for Excellence

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True authority plays a necessary role in our moral lives, and, when it is distributed according to respectable standards of excellence, it ennobles both those who direct it and those who are directed by it.
Public Discourse

Liberal Love and Sargent Shriver

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It’s far too easy when bickering about this or that policy, and particularly when the policy is morally charged, to miss the values modeled by good men and women when we disagree on the means.
Public Discourse

One Man, One Vote, One Culture: In Defense of Towns

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We require goods on a human scale, including our political communities.
Public Discourse

A Eugenics Common Sense?

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Calling fetuses defective if they are prenatally diagnosed with genetic conditions foreshadows a dangerous path toward eugenics.
Public Discourse

Truth and Lies, Nature and Convention: The Debate Over Same-Sex Marriage

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The case for same-sex marriage, as articulated in a new book that debates the issue, still refuses to recognize that civil society needs real marriage, as it has always existed, to preserve itself.
Public Discourse

Building a Culture of Religious Freedom

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If we want a culture of religious freedom, we need to begin it here, today, now. We live it by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God with passion and joy, confidence and courage; and by holding nothing back. God will take care of the rest. Adapted from remarks delivered yesterday at the Napa Institute’s 2012 annual conference.
Public Discourse

Abortion, Conscience, and Health Care Provider Rights

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A faulty understanding of conscience as an instrument of subjective preferences and feelings is fueling efforts to undermine conscience protection for doctors who oppose abortion and provision of contraceptives.
Public Discourse

The Economic Crisis and Europe’s Rule of Law Problem

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Close attention to particular decisions by European institutions and governments before and during the present economic crisis suggests that many have significantly infringed the rule of law.
Public Discourse

Religious Freedom’s Legal and Moral Basis

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The right to religious freedom was crucial to the Founders’ vision of America. Religious freedom is a right to be protected because it enables us to fulfill our human obligation to seek the truth. The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

Religious Freedom Under Fire

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The threats to religious freedom in our nation are real, and they’re serious. And things will get worse unless we defend our rights. The first in a two-part series.