The Anti-Federalists’ early fear about Congress’s taxing power—that it would result in a tax on humans’ very existence—are now realized in the Supreme Court’s upholding of Obamacare.
Author: Anthony Esolen (Anthony Esolen)
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Public and Religious Education: L’État, C’est Tout
There is no good reason to be suspicious of people of faith. There is every reason to encourage them and to be grateful for them, because even by worldly standards they make good citizens. But the State does not want to keep separate from the churches. It wants to absorb them.
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Lemmings, Unite! Be True to Yourself?
If we encourage people to turn away from what is objectively true and good, to cherish instead their beliefs, whatever those may happen to be, we are teaching them not to think at all.
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Tolerance and Reciprocity
Tolerance of wrong-doing is freely given; it is an act of graciousness, and not the paying of a debt. Therefore it rests with the offender, at the very least, to refrain from aggravating the burden of tolerance.
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Metaphysical Business
Work is at the core of our humanity, and our ownership of what we produce precedes laws demanding that we give it back to “community” in the abstract.
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One Man, One Vote, One Culture: In Defense of Towns
We require goods on a human scale, including our political communities.
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Expertise and Ethics
The virtuous life is an art; and one learns art not from theorists but from the artists themselves.
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One Human Heart: Wordsworth’s Old Cumberland Beggar and the Sweetness of Being Human
Wordsworth denounces those who reduce human worth to utility and teaches us that the goodness of being is absolute. We must learn to love those incomparably useless and precious beings, the child, the elderly, the unborn, and the dying, because they and we are one.
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In the Courthouse was the Word
Though we feel that we human beings are meant for something, not individually and arbitrarily, but together and truly, we lack the language and even the political sanction to think along those lines.
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A Tale of Two Sex Hormones
Artificial testosterone and estrogen use harms both individuals and society.
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The Paradise of Sexual Revolution
The sexual revolution puts forth a vision of paradise in which we rig up some nifty devices to guarantee infertility, consider neither holiness nor virtue, and believe in the blessings of no one and nowhere and nothing.
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Solitude and Political Friendship
True solitude is the contemplation of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and such solitude is essential to maintaining communities of friendship oriented towards non-quantifiable goods.
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Authority in the Education of a Human Being
The world of education is one where humans can flourish by acknowledging authority.
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Progressive Impiety
Slandering their fathers while energetically progressing “somewhere,” the progressive is always in a position of impiety.
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Sexual Revolution: Built Upon Sand
The body has a language of its own, and the sexual revolution is founded upon a lie.
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Sexual Revolution: Defend It, If You Can
Let the sexual revolution be justified on the grounds of the common good.