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Swamp Thing: A Qualified Huzzah for the Party Establishment

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Even when its nomination process is broken enough to give us such a man as Donald Trump for our president, the party establishment has shown a remarkable capacity to fill the voids created by his inattention and to guide many of his most important policy decisions.

Christian Rights: Did Pro-Life Advocacy Turn Conservative Evangelicals into Human Rights Advocates?

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A new book is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand conservative evangelicals on their own terms. It traces the ways in which pro-life politics has made the Christian Right of 2017 a very different entity from the Religious Right of the 1970s.

What’s Wrong with the New NIH Study on Transgender Kids?

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A new study being launched by the NIH is intended to produce evidence supporting a particular conclusion: that transgender affirmation therapy is safe and effective for gender-dysphoric youngsters. And once the federal government speaks, states and other institutions will fall in line.

The Last Jedi and the Ancien Régime: A Spoiler-Heavy Defense

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The arrogance of the Jedi and the Sith needs to be replaced with a deep sense of failure and humility, out of which fruitful service and sacrifice can grow. In this way, The Last Jedi is the Star Wars film we need right now, even if it isn’t the one we want or deserve.

Grace Builds Upon and Doesn’t Destroy Nature: On First Things, Baptism, and the Natural Family

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We need not parrot old arguments, but we should avoid giving countenance to dangerous and unproductive ones. Being novel, contrarian, and clever is no substitute for the politics of prudence and the sober pursuit of truth.

Harvey Weinstein Isn’t Unusual: Sexual Abuse and Trafficking in the United States

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The latest Harvey Weinstein allegation reminds us that, around the world and here in the United States, sex trafficking is closer than it appears.

The Mortara Case and the Limits of State Power: First Things Should Disavow Fr. Cessario’s Defense of Pius IX in the Mortara Case

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Many people do care—and care a lot—what the editors of First Things think about Christian-Jewish relations, and this time the galloping statism of First Things is doing great damage in the real world. Robert T. Miller calls on R.R. Reno to disavow the position Romanus Cessario takes on the Mortara case and to reaffirm the journal’s historical commitment to the freedom of religion as understood in liberal states.

Can Liberalism Change?

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In a paradoxical new book, Columbia University professor Mark Lilla correctly identifies the defects in contemporary liberalism and identity politics but cannot free himself from them.
philosophy, natural law

Practical Reason, Basic Goods, and Natural Law

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Reason operating without error judges that no human being should ever intend the death of another human being for any reason whatsoever. No achievable good can justify such a choice. And that is the foundation for the case against the death penalty.

The Philosophical Case against the Philosophical Case against Capital Punishment

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It’s three times more likely that you’ll die of lightning than that Aquinas will turn out to be wrong about something. The same cannot be said of New Natural Law philosophy.

Economic Freedom and Economic Opportunity: R. R. Reno Discovers Economic Growth, Blames Capitalism

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Leaders should get the facts straight before they start theorizing.

An Open Letter to the People of Iran

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The letter below was written by a bipartisan group of past Chairs together with the current Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). They praise the people of Iran for their courage and expressing solidarity with them. In addition, they call on the US government to support the protestors in Iran and to send a clear signal that human rights and the Iranian government’s treatment of dissidents will be at the top of the agenda in any future dealings between the US and Iran. This letter is a response to nearly a week of demonstrations across Iran. What began as a protest against high food prices and rampant unemployment has broadened into a political movement demanding leadership changes and greater freedom and human rights. The government has responded with violence: more than twenty protestors have been killed, and hundreds have been arrested.

Jefferson’s “Master Epicurus” and the Nature of the American Regime

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While the American regime is often criticized as Hobbesian, the letters of Thomas Jefferson provide evidence that it may be more accurately described as Epicurean.

Physicians Cannot Serve Both Death and Life

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A physician cannot truly and wholeheartedly work toward bringing his patient to health if he can choose at any time to give up that pursuit and suggest rather that the patient choose death instead.

Truth for a Transitioning Time: Andrew Walker’s God and the Transgender Debate

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God offers not mere “transition” but deep and lasting transformation.

Refreshing, Rejuvenating, and Improving Our Public Discourse: Holiday Book Recommendations

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Reading recommendations from The Witherspoon Institute staff. 

Who Are You? Alt-Right “Identitarianism,” Violence, and the Intellectual Roots of Western Civilization

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By making our common humanity irrelevant to the question of identity, Richard Spencer sets himself in diametric opposition to the intellectual roots of the “Western” civilization to which he would lay claim.

Six Things You Need to Know about Physician-Assisted Suicide

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Is the real healthcare crisis not enough physician assisted suicide laws? Or is it the staggering and increasing number of people losing their battles with mental illness and committing suicide?

Beyond Expressive Conduct: The Heterosexual Significance of the Wedding Cake

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The wedding cake is an essential element of a ritual system that expresses the public establishment of a marriage. Its form and ritual use signify the procreative sexual relationship, with its expectation of fertility in the body of the bride, which is being publicly legitimated by the wedding.

Manhood Is Not Natural

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Manhood is not natural, but it is essential. No society can endure if it does not harness male sexual energy and teach men to take care of the children they father and the women who bear them.

What’s Wrong with Rod Dreher’s Straussian Narrative of the American Constitution

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Because he accepts a Straussian framework that sees modernity rather than Christianity as the major turning point of Western history, Rod Dreher underestimates the influence of Christian and classical thought on the American founding.

Resisting the Fortress of Solitude: What’s Wrong with First Things’ Anxious Anti-Capitalism

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Young people today, especially the ones who are serious about religion and look to the editors of First Things for guidance, must resist the allure of an intellectual Fortress of Solitude where they can sit and feel superior to everyone. Griping about the state of society is a waste of time. Part two of two.

Notes from Reality About Economic Regulation: What’s Wrong with First Things’ Anxious Anti-Capitalism

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R.R. Reno’s manifesto on capitalism—in which he concludes, among other things, that expanding economic freedom leads to transgenderism—is based on empirically false claims. Part one of a two-part series.

Will the Trump Administration Push Back Against Transgender Ideology in Schools?

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Until policy-makers and the public realize the factual and moral bankruptcy of transgender ideology, pressure will continue to mount to normalize the tragically abnormal.