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Public Discourse

The Two-Biological-Parent Family and Economic Prosperity: What’s Gone Wrong

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Research shows the positive economic effect of two-biological-parent families on our society. Single parenthood and other alternative family structures not only hurt our economy, they hurt our children, those who care for them, and those for whom our children will care later in life. The first in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

The Vocation of a Doctor

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Doctors are called to a life of compassionate service to human beings invested with intrinsic dignity. This essay is adapted from the Commencement Address Dr. Landry delivered at the St. Louis University School of Medicine.
Public Discourse

Employment and Social Justice

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When we debate problems of social justice, we must keep our shared principles separate from the means we advocate to recognize them. Failure to do so produces unfruitful discourse and misdirected charges.
Public Discourse

A Realist Philosophical Case For Urbanism and Against Sprawl: Part Two

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Arguments for traditional urbanism are de facto truth claims about nature and human nature, and point to and are supported by the natural law. Why we can and should think normatively about our building patterns. Part two of two.
Public Discourse

A Realist Philosophical Case For Urbanism and Against Sprawl: Part One

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Arguments for traditional urbanism are de facto truth claims about nature and human nature, and point to and are supported by the natural law. Why we can and should think normatively about our building patterns. Part one of two.
Public Discourse

Is Sex Just Like Race?

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Race and sex play qualitatively different roles in our interactions with each other, making sex rationally relevant to our social and political policies in a way that race is not.
Public Discourse

Planned Parenthood’s Lawless Policies

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Planned Parenthood must account for its disregard for the law if it wishes to retain state funding.
Public Discourse

That’s Entertainment: Free Speech and the Moral Regulation of the Arts

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A recent Supreme Court case reveals a division amongst conservatives over the moral foundations of the law.
Public Discourse

Islam Will Find Its Own Way to Freedom

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With extremism losing momentum, there is hope that the Muslim Middle East is beginning once again to embrace the liberalism of early 20th-century Islam.
Public Discourse

Let Freedom Ring: The Muslim Call for Religious Freedom

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As the call for freedom advances in Muslim-majority countries, we have good reason to be optimistic that religious freedom will increase as well.
Public Discourse

Religious Liberty and Development of Doctrine in Islam

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By the year 2020, the Islamic nations of the Mediterranean Basin will resound with positive cries for democracy, human rights, individual liberty, and the dignity of every man, woman, and child.
Public Discourse

Sexual Revolution: Built Upon Sand

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The body has a language of its own, and the sexual revolution is founded upon a lie.
Public Discourse

Social Contracts, Human Flourishing, and the Economy

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Our current economic debates underscore the case for an approach to political economy that rejects social contract theory and embraces a robust conception of human flourishing.
Public Discourse

Offense and Criticism in the Marriage Debates

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To take offense does not free us from further argument or criticism. Instead, offense demands ongoing criticism between partners in ethical discourse as a recognition of their fundamental human equality.
Public Discourse

The Caregiver’s Lesson

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Those who care for the severely disabled and dependent testify to our sense that they are part of the human community.
Public Discourse

The Family: What Is to Be Done?

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Marital love implies dependence on another instead of autonomy, and it shows that certain goods (sex and procreation, love and marriage, marriage and parenthood) are connected. We must recover the language of self-giving. The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

The Family’s End

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The logic of contract and the movement to conquer nature have resulted in the triumph of autonomy and demise of the family. The first of a two-part series.
Public Discourse

Who’s Afraid of Metaphysics?

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Metaphysics provides the crucial foundation for natural law, and our current intellectual climate is ripe for embracing metaphysical foundations once again. The third in a three-part series.
Public Discourse

Moral Absolutes and the Humpty Dumpty Fallacy

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Acts are not made good or bad by our mere say-so. We must also examine the objective intention of our actions. The second in a three-part series.
Public Discourse

What Does it Mean to be a ‘Political Animal’?

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A notion of “social practice” should guide the way we think about morality and politics. The first in a three-part series.
Public Discourse

From Heels to Wheels: American Zoning Laws and the End of Western Public Space

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Zoning codes used to favor settlement patterns scaled for human beings. No longer.
Public Discourse

Same-Sex Marriage and Human Fulfillment

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Public recognition of unions contrary to human flourishing will hurt, not help, the happiness of those who participate in them.
Public Discourse

War and Moral Sanity: Nuclear Attacks

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An exploration of how war affects people, and what it does to their natural moral instincts. The second in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

War and Moral Sanity

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An exploration of how war affects people, and what it does to their natural moral instincts. The first in a two-part series.