fbpx

Author: Daniel E. Burns (Daniel Burns)

About the Author
Post
February 20, 2021February 23, 2021Education, Institutions, Sunday Long Reads

A Time to Build Schools

By

Our nation’s morally formative institutions are weak and weakening further, thanks in no small part to the enormously destructive effects of social media. The single type of institution best suited to resist these and other pressures of our times is the mission-driven, tech-skeptical K–12 school. The successes of our best countercultural colleges and universities, viewed in the light of Yuval Levin’s invaluable work on the nature of institutions, show us how the incentive structures of an excellent K–12 school make it the formative institution our time needs most.

Post
July 13, 2020July 14, 2020Politics, Public Discourse

The State of Social Conservatism and the Role of Public Discourse

By

Public Discourse offers social conservatives precisely the type of forum that the particular challenges of our time demand. In the face of countless challenges to our familiar assumptions about politics, law, and economics, we need an honest and robust conversation among people who share the same basic moral commitments but defend widely different policies on the basis of those commitments.

Post
January 28, 2020February 24, 2021Book Reviews, Institutions

Institutions and the Culture War in 2020

By

In order to alleviate our social crisis, we will need to improve the moral formation that our institutions provide their members. Yet the institutions best suited to lead in this task are those with a religious mission, which in turn are imperiled by the culture war that elite institutions are waging against them. The cause of institutionalism today therefore requires a forceful defense against the aggressions of the cultural Left. Part two of a two-part review essay.

Post
December 18, 2019December 18, 2019Philosophy, Politics

The Real Failure of Liberal Theory

By

Conservative critics of “liberalism” are right to identify major flaws in liberal theory. But a deeper appreciation of those flaws should prevent us from blaming the American political tradition for them. Liberal theory is so erroneous that neither the Founders nor any other Americans could ever really put it into practice.

Subscribe to Public Discourse!