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Public Discourse

Was It All for This? The Failure of the Conservative Legal Movement

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The bargain has never been explicitly articulated, but religious conservatives know what it is. The bargain is that you go along with the party establishment, you support their policies and priorities—or at least keep your mouth shut about it—and, in return, the establishment will put some judges on the bench who supposedly will protect your constitutional rights to freedom of worship, to freedom of exercise. How has that worked out for us?
Common Good

Where (Not) to Begin with the Common Good

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The common good is the flourishing of a community qua community. Every community is built around a common end, which is simply that it excel, in justice, as whatever kind of emergently real community it is. The common good is primarily a practical idea, but if our starting point is too practical we are apt to miss the challenge that the common good poses to the modern political imaginary. On the other hand, a starting point that is too metaphysical will fail to engage the real questions of common life.
Pillars

Life Lessons: Four Pillars, Three Little Pigs

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We have limited time. So how should we use it? What will our lives mean when we finally look back on them? Like it or not, we inevitably choose a path, either by our love or refusal to love; by our actions or our refusals to act.
Books

Liberal Learning beyond Liberalism: The Humanities as Soulcraft in the Renaissance and Today

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Liberal justifications of liberal education are no longer effective. Teachers of humanities need a different way of defending the value of what we do and love. The Renaissance can teach us how to make a case for the study of old books that is compatible with the values of a pluralist society.
Church

The Greatest and First Commandment

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Mark Galli’s new book When Did We Start Forgetting God? is a call not to look outward or inward, but upward: to worship God simply for the sake of worshiping God.
Hand

We Need a “Manhattan Project” for Racial Reconciliation

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Fifty years from now, no one will care about May’s job numbers or the rocket launch. But they will remember whether—in the face of 400 years of pain and oppression—the president of the United States took decisive and bold action to heal this nation of its racist past and present through a particular and sustained national effort.
Woman

Pressing Pause on the Global Transgender Youth Pandemic

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Before Covid-19’s pernicious spread, another health phenomenon had reached epidemic proportions and is still occurring on a global level. Unlike the virus, its vulnerable population is the young—especially young girls.
Rubio

On the Unjust Death of George Floyd and Racism in America

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The fact is, many in positions of power and influence are oblivious or unaware of the unique challenges disproportionately facing African American communities across this country. We must now acknowledge these challenges and address these disparities that they create. The only way forward is to treat each other with the empathy and respect required of a people who have decided to share a nation—and a future.
Reflection

Lessons from King, Tocqueville, and Augustine on Loving Our Black Neighbors

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As a nation, all citizens, regardless of color, need to respond to the persistent threat of institutional racism and persistent police brutality as if their own person was at stake. We must act to preserve life and the common good as quickly as if we were trying to preserve our own property from looting.
bed

Expanding Euthanasia during the Pandemic

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It seems particularly disturbing to imagine legalizing euthanasia in this moment, let alone expanding access to euthanasia if it is already legal. Even so, this is precisely what is underway in Canada.
Books

Isolation Bookshelf: Classic Texts on the Problem of Justice

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Accommodation and half measures—the stuff of everyday political life—will not do when we encounter the politics of mastery and subjugation. Aristotle’s “partnership of free persons” demands more.

The Nuclear Family Is Indispensable

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Advocates for family fluidity routinely level two claims against the nuclear family: first, that it is a mere “blip” on the historical map, and second, that it is largely unconnected to the well-being of individuals (especially children). In both instances the goal is to diminish its significance as a valuable form of kinship structure. For all their popularity, however, neither assumption withstands scrutiny.
Windows

Would America Be Better Off without Religion?

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A great irony of the Jewish and Christian faith traditions: One must be willing to accept suffering and sacrifice for a greater purpose that transcends one’s particular material and sensual needs and desires. Counter-intuitively, it is these transcendent qualities of faith that eschew utilitarian aims for a greater purpose that create the circumstances for greater material well-being.
Pregnant

Funding Illegal Surrogacy

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The UK Supreme Court has upheld a claim for a woman to pursue four commercial surrogacy pregnancies in California at the expense of the UK taxpayer. This Judgment is extraordinary in that commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK, and two Supreme Court Judges dissented from the Judgment on the grounds that it is against public policy for a court to award damages to enable conduct abroad that is illegal in the UK.
Scale

The Problem of Human Rights

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For the considerable body of people in the western world who still believe in self-government, and in the preservation of their nations’ traditional moral identities, the overreaching of the contemporary human rights project will perhaps lead them to reconsider natural law, presented in a prudently modest formulation. This is a crucial undertaking to which Pierre Manent’s new book is a worthy contribution.
Uncertainty

Living with Uncertainty

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It is a cliché to say that religious faith helps people to cope with stress. As with many clichés, this one is both true and false. How one uses religion to cope with stress is key.
Books

Isolation Bookshelf: Words Matter

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Each of the books I mention here can help us to be conscious—to be “in the know,” which is what Austen meant by the word—thus using the gift of speech in ways that accord with our nature as “the reflexive animal,” as Lewis calls us, governed by “the inner lawgiver” (Lewis again) of our conscience. And these conjoined obligations—to our nature and to our speech—are why even pronouns are a field of battle that truth-tellers should not surrender.
Nursing home

Amid Cries for Justice, a Surge of Mercy

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Justice, in the Bible and in the Christian tradition, demands that we protect and remember every vulnerable and isolated person, made in the image of God. As reopening moves ahead, a surge of mercy to protect the elderly and others who are confined might prove a healing tonic for a bitterly riven society—and for the Christian church.
Fetus

Research Using Cells of Illicit Origin and Vaccines from Fetal Tissue

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What happens if a possible future vaccine for COVID-19 is developed unethically, by using contemporary tissue from aborted children? Could pro-life citizens morally use such a vaccine?
Coronavirus

Moral Guidance on Using COVID-19 Vaccines Developed with Human Fetal Cell Lines

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If a COVID-19 vaccine is developed with the use of cell lines derived from an aborted fetus, should a citizen of conscience who is opposed to abortion avail herself of it to protect herself and her loved ones during this time of pandemic? Using such a medical therapy would be morally justifiable only if its use did not contribute to future evil acts and if its use was occasioned by a grave proportionate reason.
Prayer

COVID-19 Relief and Saving Catholic Schools

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Catholic schools, along with other faith-based schools, are a vital gift to the families they serve and to our country. America’s COVID-19 relief efforts should support the educational choices of all families and work to save Catholic schools.
Andrew T. Walker

Introducing our New Contributing Editor, Andrew T. Walker

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Through being a Public Discourse reader, I’ve made friendships I would not otherwise have made. The joy of any movement is the relationships it fosters, and my life would be less fulfilled were it not for the intellectual camaraderie that is enjoyed by many within the Public Discourse readership.
Matt's Bookshelf

Isolation Bookshelf: Laugh Out Loud with P.G. Wodehouse

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Wodehouse’s work, from virtually any period of his long career, is amazingly consistent. One learns after a while that when one begins a Wodehouse story, satisfaction is guaranteed. Like a fresh whisky and soda, his work promises an easing of the tensions of daily life, an invitation to merriment, and a quiet contentment that in the end all will be well.
Prayer

Reviving the Freedom of Association

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A competent First Amendment jurisprudence must adequately account for the rich web of associations that enable human flourishing. To live in communities according to shared values is essential to our humanity.