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Wine, Medicine, and Risks to Health

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The new antagonism toward wine and other forms of alcohol seems similarly de-personal to me. It neglects the way that wine, at its best, functions in relationships: at a family meal, a wedding, a couple celebrating their anniversary, and the Eucharistic feast. And it treats what should be an individual decision—to drink or not—entirely in terms of a statistical approach to alcohol’s health risks.

Scrutinizing the Sacred

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Scruton was acutely aware that, in a society that has largely lost its religion, art can give people a sense of the timeless and transcendental. That is why he spent his life defending genuine art from those who would “do dirt on life.” However, it is also true that art can never provide the redemption that is promised by religion. The reason for this is that while art may offer us “intimations” of the sacred, only religion can reconcile us to it. 

Contra Koppelman—What Mere Natural Law Was About

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Any system of jurisprudence must find its ground in these anchoring truths that we can reliably know, because they are true of necessity. They are the principles of reason that mark the natural law, the law that underlies our positive law. And any scheme of natural law built on these grounds then cannot be, as Andrew Koppelman labels it, a mere “theory” of the natural law. It would be the real thing.

Ozempocalypse?

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It’s unclear so far what, if any, decisive or long-term impact Ozempic might have on American health. But the contours of the debate are revealing.

The Bookshelf: Recovering the Academic Vocation

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If the academy can produce teachers able to communicate to students the perfectly useless joy of learning, then it may continue to make its most valuable contribution to our civic life.

A Theology of Health

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While the MAHA critique is correct, there is plenty of room for thinking and engaging about what will replace the impoverished vision of health that got us into this mess. Tyler VanderWeele, and the vision he lays out in A Theology of Health, should be at the center of those conversations. 

The Euthanasia of Ivan Ilyich: Recovering Good Lives and Deaths in the Age of Assisted Dying

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The direction of our culture is increasingly toward “death pods” where we will die alone, because we, like Ivan, have refused to really live together. Resisting such a culture of solitary and uncared for assisted dying will take legislation, but it will also require that we spend some time with Ilyich and try to recover the goodness of a good life and of a good death.

Forgetfulness, Forgiveness, and Politics: The Case of Congress

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Congress has declined into a destructive cycle of revenge. To preserve the institution and strengthen our politics, politicians must take the risk to forgive.

Forming a Cultural Mind

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If you want a guide for revitalizing Western academia and culture, read Joseph Stuart’s masterly introduction to the thought of Christopher Dawson.

What Does It Mean to Be a Woman? An Interview with Dr. Abigail Favale on Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex

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Feminism is a very fractious world. There’s a lot of different visions of what’s wrong and how we fix it. But all of the modern strands can trace their roots back to The Second Sex.

In Defense of Christian Civilization

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In announcing Christianity’s incompatibility with civilization, Kingsnorth implicitly claims to have noticed a vital truth of the faith that was somehow overlooked by most of the great teachers of Christianity for most of Christian history. This is a rather dubious proposition.

Harmonizing Heaven and Earth: A Response to Kingsnorth’s “Against Christian Civilization”

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The answer to the fear of Babylon, then—Kingsnorth’s “civilizational Christianity”—is not to relinquish the fields where civilization is made in order to pursue a purer form of Christian service. The answer is rather to seek the Kingdom first with such clarity of intention that every domain of human making can assume its rightful share in Christ’s offering of himself and all created things to his Father.

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

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Once you concede that the universe might be a bit more than just a collision of atoms doing meaningless expansions and contractions, you are not standing alone next to an enigmatic aurochs, staring with bafflement into its inhuman eyes. No, you are standing in the same place that generations of human beings have found themselves before: at the beginning of a journey, a quest, a pilgrim’s progress, that you have good reason to believe is going somewhere quite important, somewhere of ultimate significance.

Medical Conservatism Is the Antidote to MAHA

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When the next opportunity arrives, it should be used as a chance to demonstrate that Kennedy promises the same outcomes as the existing regime, just with different medicine. And if we want to finally cure ourselves of our failing model of health and wellness, we should start with a dose of medical conservatism.

Why the Founders Chose the Electoral College Design

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The Founders feared tyrannies, especially majority tyrannies. We remain free not because of the Bill of Rights, but because of the dynamic checks and balances in our national and state constitutions. 

Jordan Peterson and the Problem of God

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Peterson is not looking to illuminate the pages of the Bible per se. He seems interested in the Bible only insofar as the stories it contains connect with other mythical or symbolic stories throughout human history, and support his main thesis: that each individual should aim at that which is highest and organize life (and by extension, society) accordingly.

Critiquing Hadley Arkes’s Not-So-Mere Natural Law Theory

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Law necessarily has a moral foundation. Exploring that foundation can help us understand what law can and should be. The project of finding anchoring truths is well worth undertaking, and the natural law tradition has something to contribute to that.
mother and baby

Making Sense of America’s Maternal Mortality Crisis

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Pro-life state laws both pre- and post-Dobbs prevent the intentional killing of preborn human beings, not essential obstetric care such as the treatment of pregnancy complications before, during, and after childbirth. Any misunderstandings to the contrary on the part of physicians probably stem from rampant misinformation about abortion laws.
religious freedom in the US

Religion, State Law, and the Common Good

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How can government and religion properly work together to promote the common good?
family

What Is the Economic Impact of Low Birth Rates? A Q&A with Jesús Fernández-Villaverde

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Everyone can have their own beliefs about the ethical principles of human fertility. From a pure accounting perspective, however, the problem is people are not getting married. So, making IVF cheaper, for example, is not solving that issue.

The Civics Playbook

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A lot of people will no doubt want to know about the political direction of the new civics centers, and there is no hiding that they are inspired by conservative intellectual sensibilities. But to think that there is any sort of partisan agenda set from above misses the point of these schools entirely.
Supreme Court

Saving Religion from Incoherence

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It is past time to restore some semblance of order to the law of religion.
Venus de Medici

Written in Water: A Look inside the Currents of Art History 

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What makes the popularity of a work of art wax and wane is one of the most intriguing questions in the history of aesthetic preferences.
3d ultrasound

What President Trump Is Doing (And Should Do) about Abortion

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Using only his executive authority as president, what actions could Trump take to respect the lives of unborn children?