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Archives - Page 97 of 175 - Public Discourse

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.

The Inalienable Right to Life: An Update on Assisted Suicide in the United States and Canada

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We must act now to prevent assisted suicide from gaining a stronger foothold in the United States.

Leo Strauss and the Pursuit of Knowledge: A Reply to Paul DeHart

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Leo Strauss’s statements on philosophy do not deny that knowledge is possible. Rather, they emphasize that philosophy—while motivated by awareness of one’s own ignorance—is a way of life teleologically ordered toward knowledge.

The Fourteenth Amendment and Masterpiece Cakeshop: Equal Citizenship, our Inclusive Republic, and Anglo-American Common Law

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The government cannot impose creedal and exclusionary limits on occupational freedom by compelling particular citizens to provide goods and services contrary to their beliefs, unless those citizens have such a monopoly market power as to exclude other citizens from the market.

Minority Stress Is Real, but Wedding Cakes Don’t Cause It

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New research points to “internalized homophobia” as the problem, not external discrimination.

Religious Exemptions Aren’t Special Privileges

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Why are Christian bakers and florists less worthy of accommodation than groups who would engage in nearly identical behavior for equally expressive, but not necessarily religious, purposes?

Equal Property Rights for All, Including Christian Wedding Cake Bakers

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Just as governors, abortionists, and sexual-identity activists enjoy legal protection for their property rights, so do religious business owners.

The Christian Baker’s Unanswered Legal Argument: Why the Strongest Objections Fail

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The Supreme Court is about to decide whether a baker has a First Amendment right not to be compelled to design and create cakes celebrating same-sex weddings. The baker’s best legal argument is simple, and it survives the best objections filed by the ACLU and Progressive scholars.