Why ISIS Might Win, Even If It Loses
If Western culture continues to be defined by the pitiful desire to go on living in as much physical comfort as possible, we will continue to be victimized and oppressed by the much more powerful appeal of radical Islam to die for God and eternal happiness.
The New Dignity: Gnostic, Elitist, Self-Destructive Will-to-Power
In a world with no clear origin, no purposeful end, and no intrinsic meaning, human dignity is founded on nothing more than a self-creating will to power that is, in the last analysis, self-destructive.
The American Dream in Crisis: It’s Time for a New Moynihan Moment
The American Dream is in crisis because the American family is in crisis. We must commit to a national—not purely governmental—effort to promote strong families.
Rights Through Obligations: The Case of Free Speech
Some rights are grounded in the need for agents to fulfill their perceived responsibilities, including their obligation to pursue knowledge. This obligation, along with the communal nature of inquiry, supports a right to free speech that acquires particular stringency in those communities where inquiry is most essential.
Could America Survive without Religion?
Can freedom survive in a society in which most citizens believe that human beings, who are supposed to have inalienable rights, are merely material beings inhabiting a universe of purely material and efficient causality?
Anti-Zionists Misread the Bible
The authors of the New Testament never eliminated distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, but they did prophesy a world to come centered in Jerusalem.
The End of Europe
Unless Europe is willing to affirm, defend, and promote its roots, it has no future beyond a dystopia of non-judgmentalism, managed decline, and increasing religiously inspired violence.
Substantive Due Process: What is the Question, and Why Does It Matter?
In debates over marriage and abortion, we should make arguments based on constitutional texts and judicial precedent. But would it be legitimate also for judges to consider overarching questions of justice and natural law?
Uncivil Discourse, Part Two: A Call for Intellectual Humility
To rehabilitate our public discourse, we each need to cultivate more self-awareness about the potential weaknesses and limitations of our own proposals.
Uncivil Discourse: Modern Media’s Ideological Junkspace
Political discussions in the public realm have become increasingly shallow: something more akin to a children’s mud fight than the rational discourse America’s founders hoped would characterize the civic life of the American republic.
A Lesson for Aspiring Academics: On Alice von Hildebrand’s Happy Failure
In her memoirs of teaching at Hunter College for nearly forty years, Alice von Hildebrand shows aspiring academics the importance of perseverance, courage, and love in the face of hostility toward one’s moral and religious views.
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.
Rending the Rainbow Veil: How to Make Your Church a Safe Space for Christians with Same-Sex Attraction
Church communities should strive to be safe spaces where those with same-sex attraction can take refuge, openly sharing their experiences. We must affirm their dignity as children of God and lovingly refuse to encourage any behavior that is contrary to their good.
Lessons from Vincent Van Gogh: Celebrity Culture and the Rights of Domestic Workers
Our treasured religious beliefs tell us time and time again to care for the poor and the destitute and to love the strangers among us. We know that domestic workers and underprivileged laborers deserve our care and attention, but in our celebrity-suffused culture, we often forget this truth.
Birth Certificates, Fatherhood, and Same-Sex Marriage: Sotomayor v. Sotomayor
Which Justice Sotomayor will show up in the next landmark family-law case: the Sotomayor who affirms the “precious” rights and duties of biological parents? Or the Sotomayor who insists on full “marriage equality”?
Recovering Lincoln’s Teaching on the Limits to the Courts–and Giving the News to David Blankenhorn
History clearly demonstrates that the legislative branch can legitimately act to counter the rulings of the judicial branch. This is as true for marriage as it was for slavery.
Why Christians Shouldn’t Be Zionists
God has not left behind Israel and its land—he has expanded them.
Attention, Low-Income Women of Oregon: Your Reproduction Is Now the Government’s Business
Oregon’s implementation of its new contraceptive metric is an alarming sign that nationwide governmental monitoring of America’s low-income women’s reproduction is on its way—along with flagrant disregard for women’s privacy and religious freedom.
