If we want a different politics, ultimately we must offer a different moral imagination for ourselves, our children, and theirs.
Author: Patrick J. Deneen (Patrick Deneen)
Corrupting the Youth? A Response to Reilly
There is no distinctive Catholic political philosophy today, and Robert Reilly’s call to man the battlements of classical liberalism is an attempt to short-circuit the possibility of a real revival of Catholic political thought in America.
How Will Future Historians Treat Same-Sex Marriage?
Future historians will probably marvel that LGBT activists—a small, well-organized, and wealthy segment of the population—successfully deployed civil rights language for material benefit, especially at a time when national economic inequality only continues to worsen.
Liberalism’s Logic and America’s Challenge: A Reply to Schlueter and Muñoz
The Founders’ vision of the “common good” was not the pre-modern natural law conception of an objective human good, but a conception of “mutual advantage” shaped by the social contract framework. This logic of liberalism has driven our country to its current political and cultural problems.
Beyond Wishful Thinking: A Response to Schlueter
“Natural law liberalism” is a chimera that cannot and does not exist in the American tradition.
Better than Our Philosophy: A Response to Muñoz
Our Founding liberal principles aren’t the best invocation against inhuman practices like slavery and abortion because they also produce self-aggrandizement, individualism, willfulness, and a conception of liberty as the absence of constraint.