It is a natural thing for southerners to be drawn to Lee’s memory and to look up in admiration at a statue in his likeness. But the fact remains: such statues say to black Americans, in the voice of the unreconstructed white majority, “We’re back in charge, and don’t you forget it.”
Author: Matthew J. Franck (Matthew Franck)
Understanding the Election: The How and the Why of 2016
Political scientists James W. Ceaser, Andrew E. Busch, and John J. Pitney, Jr., take a hard look at the 2016 election, adding another book to their series of insightful election analyses.
Paving a Playground, and Weeding the Unruly Garden of Religious Liberty
This week’s 7-2 decision in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church goes a long way toward restoring order to the Supreme Court’s religious liberty jurisprudence.
Recovering a More Complex Story of the Christian West
Nick Spencer’s recent collection of essays reminds us to appreciate the complex relationship between Christianity and modernity.
Kermit Gosnell and the Ideology of Abortion on Demand
If this butcher could carry on virtually in the open for so many years—if he could even be permitted one more “procedure” before police on the scene put an end to his sordid business—how many other clinics like his are there?
Declaring Equality Without Supplying Its Ground: Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration
Our fundamental equality as rational created beings is the source of our inalienable rights. Failure to understand this makes it impossible to truly understand the Declaration or the principles of limited government.
A Vote’s Consequences and a Voter’s Conscience
Vote as if your ballot determines nothing whatsoever—except the shape of your own character.
A Philosopher’s Defense of the Reasoning Believer
An excellent new book, written with admirable clarity, demonstrates the compatibility—indeed the happy and mutually fulfilling companionship—of faith and reason, even and especially in matters of public life.
Stephen Douglas and Donald Trump’s America: Lessons from Lincoln
Seeing in our contemporary politics the revival of Douglas Democracy in all its anxieties about freedom—and seeing it make such headway in Lincoln’s political party—is disheartening in the extreme. The imperative of learning from Lincoln, as Allen Guelzo’s work brings him to us, has never been stronger.
The Evolving HHS Mandate: A Play in Three Acts (So Far)
A play in three acts, each consisting of a meeting between the CEO of a religious charity and the agent representing her health insurance company.
Antonin Scalia, Persistent Champion of Constitutional Republicanism
The students of Justice Scalia were not merely those who took his classes or served as his clerks. Through his opinions, he taught countless others the importance of the rule of law, republican self-government, and the virtue of courageous persistence in a good cause.
Presidential Elections, Party Establishments, and Demagogues
The American Founders created a careful system to prevent the election of the power-hungry. Progressive-led changes to the electoral process in the twentieth century, however, make it all too easy for ambitious demagogues to seize control—as first Obama did, and now Trump is doing to far worse ends.
Don’t Eliminate the Filibuster–Restore and Reform It
With a simple change, the Senate can restore its republican bona fides, give minority points of view an audible voice, greatly reduce the number of filibusters, make incremental gains in the passage of bills important to the majority, and improve the quality of debate.
Due Process and the Logic of the Law: A Response to Hadley Arkes
To properly understand due process, we must grasp the key distinctions between law and decrees and between law and morality. If judges are authoritative arbiters of the “logic of morals,” we have subjected ourselves to an unelected, life-tenured legal elite whose reach exceeds our grasp.
The HHS Mandate: The Legal Argument that Should Prevail at the Supreme Court
The Eighth Circuit Court has created the opportunity for religious freedom to win again in the Supreme Court. But it is Judge Daniel Manion of the Seventh Circuit Court who supplies the arguments that should triumph, for everyone’s freedom.
The Unreasonableness of Secular Public Reason
When voters and legislators act on religiously informed moral convictions in making the law, it may entail a blending of religion and politics that is disquieting to the secular liberal mind, but it closes no gap in the “separation of church and state.”
Thanks for Everything, Justice Kennedy
As a legal opinion, Obergefell is an utter failure, relying as it does on a tenuous and historically ungrounded jurisprudence of “dignity.” The debate over same-sex marriage is not over. A constitutional ruling so shoddily reasoned, so completely and easily dismantled by the dissents, must paper over a cause that cannot ultimately win in an open debate.
Professor Paulsen and Justice Scalia: A Qualified Defense of the Smith Decision
There are some problems in the reasoning of Justice Scalia’s opinion in the 1990 religious freedom case. But in its holding, and in its rejection of a quarter century of jurisprudence that could not be squared with the First Amendment, the judgment was correct.
Abraham Lincoln as Plutarch Might Have Seen Him
Thanks to its sympathy and its moral seriousness, Richard Brookhiser’s new biography of Abraham Lincoln is a fine study of statesmanship.
The Beauty of the Country of Marriage
In a brave new book, Anthony Esolen describes the very real consequences of redefining marriage.
After Hobby Lobby, the Struggle for Religious Freedom Continues
According to the structure of the Court’s logic, all objecting employers should receive the same religious freedom protection given to churches and religious orders.
What’s Wrong is Right: A Revolution in Rationalization
Today, we face a movement to accomplish on a societal level what those who embrace morally condemned behavior have always sought as individuals: rationalization.
Declaration Man: How Justice Clarence Thomas Earned His Enemies
For Justice Clarence Thomas, the foundation of all our law lies in the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, beginning with human equality.
Same-Sex Marriage Makes Liberal Judges Irrational
A New Jersey judge’s contorted and nonsensical decision that the state is responsible for the federal government’s failure to recognize same-sex marriage highlights the irrationality that permeates the campaign for “marriage equality.”
A Lincoln for Our Times
In his new book on Abraham Lincoln, Rich Lowry depicts our famous president as a lover of freedom, commerce, and progress whom we revere on the same plane as the founders because he, like them, articulated enduring principles that we still value.