Even Very Sick Children Deserve Medical Care: Why Every State Needs “Simon’s Law”

Parents of very young, very sick children deserve the right to make medical decisions for their sons and daughters, no matter how difficult those decisions may be.
Support the Work of Public Discourse

A note from the editor.
How and Why We Remember the Dead: A Memorial Day Lesson from Walt Whitman

As we approach Memorial Day, we have an opportunity to reflect on how and why we remember the dead. Walt Whitman tried to restore individuality, dignity, and personhood to those “hundreds, thousands obliterated” by the violence of war.
Rendering the Sexed Body Legally Invisible: How Transgender Law Hurts Women

The gross misappropriation of executive power to utterly remake the meaning of very basic legal terms threatens not only the structure of our government. It threatens the rule of law itself. This distortion of legal language is a particular threat to laws concerning women.
A De-Sexed Society is a De-Humanized Society

President Obama’s transgender directive isn’t about civil rights or bathroom use. It’s about state control over personal relationships.
Political Philosophy and the Bathroom Wars

A recent statement by the Attorney General provides a window into the intellectual history surrounding the concept of “human dignity” and the selfhood from which it arises.
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.
Dear Mr. Trump: If You Want to Make America Great Again, You’ve Got to Start with Marriage

If you want to make America great again, you cannot afford to ignore the role stable marriage plays in motivating our labor force and in our nation’s economic growth as a whole.
The Problem of Character: Why Conservatives Must Reject Donald Trump

The face that is emerging for the GOP is the ugly face we have always been accused of having—misogynistic, racist, and gratuitously authoritarian. If we assent to his nomination, how can we still consider ourselves the flag bearers of the attempt to harmonize virtue and the political life?
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.
Global Capitalism versus Christianity? A Response to David Bentley Hart

Christianity has never seen the pursuit of virtue as incompatible with private possession of wealth.
Women and Abortion: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Pro-abortion groups promote stories that present abortion as an empowering experience, but those in post-abortion recovery ministries know a different reality. Many women and men are deeply wounded by their experience of abortion.
Unnecessary and Inappropriate Constitutional Conflict in North Carolina

If the federal government, via the interpretive activity of one of its executive departments, can issue mandates to the states regarding bathrooms, it is hard to imagine an area of local governance shielded from federal scrutiny.
Can Trump Be the Man Eisenhower Was?

It’s time for another Morningside Heights Declaration.
The Politics of Passion: The Lesson of Thomas More

If we want a just society, we must begin by recovering the right understanding of prudence. We must not commit the idealist’s error of making the best the enemy of the good.
Who Represents “We the People?”

Political institutions force individuals to cooperate, to listen to opposing points of view, and to think about the decisions they are about to make. They delay and complicate the way that consent is expressed, but this is precisely why they are necessary: they help ensure that the public will is reasonable.
The Meaninglessness of Our Political Discourse: A Lesson from George Orwell

If a slogan can mean anything to anyone, who could oppose it?
Valuing Full-Time Motherhood

While most Americans respect and appreciate mothers on an individual basis, we as a society devalue their vocation.
The Right to Be Differently Excellent: Why Christian Colleges Should Be Allowed to Be Christian

Vanderbilt is legally free to constitute itself as a non-religious university. The question is whether Gordon College will be left free to constitute itself as a Christian college. Will we have equal liberty, or only liberty for those who despise Christianity?
You Don’t Need “Meternity” Leave to Be Happy—You Just Need to Love Someone Else More Than Yourself

Becoming parents shocks us out of our normal state of being. It compels us to love others more deeply and to act upon that love more fully.
The Gospel of Happiness

Christopher Kaczor’s The Gospel of Happiness brings new insight to Christian practice by applying the lessons of positive psychology to it. His approach shows how both religious and secular seekers of happiness can learn and benefit from the other tradition.
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.