What A Muslim Family’s Chair for the Pope Teaches Children about Catholic-Muslim Relations
A new children’s book provides a way to introduce children to Christian-Muslim relations by celebrating robust and full religious expression in a diverse society.
Political Theory, Travel, and the Love of Home
If we approach it correctly, travel can help us to see the beauty of other cultures and ways of life without denigrating either the primacy of truth or one’s own native country.
The Need for Thick Schools: Classical Education Against Cynicism
Many of our schools are breeding grounds for cynicism. Schools need to be “thick” institutions that tutor students’ deep human needs of happiness, friendship, approval, and rootedness.
Educating the Educated: The Why and How of Liberal Education for Adults
Many adults discover that their undergraduate education has provided little material for real intellectual, creative, or spiritual life. St. John’s Graduate Institute, emphasizing Great Books and discussion, furnishes an invaluable model for educating adults with non-professional, life-informing goals.
The iPhone and Us
On this tenth anniversary of the birth of the first smartphone, the day of reckoning is at hand: how will we Millennials produce the next generation of great books when the smartphone has killed our capacity to concentrate?
The Physiophobe: Modern Man Against Reality
We are physiophobes: we are afraid of, or we detest, the way things are. We take no delight in the real. We do not revel in boys being boys and girls being girls, and their coming together in marriage, the real thing, to make children, real children.
Ten (Bad, But Popular) Arguments for Abortion
A philosophy professor reflects on the poor arguments that convince his students of the justice of abortion.
National Sovereignty and the Challenge of Immigration
The idea of national sovereignty is indispensable to any coherent discussion of immigration policy.
St. Louis’s Unholy War on Religious Liberty
An ordinance passed in St. Louis, Missouri, prohibits discrimination in housing or employment on the basis of “reproductive health decisions.” Promoted as an anti-discrimination measure, the law’s actual purpose is to destroy the self-government of religious and pro-life organizations.
The Legacy of White Supremacy: Why Confederate Monuments Should Come Down
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.”
The Human Rights Campaign Rewards Walmart for Having the Same Bathroom Policy as North Carolina
If major leaders in the gay movement cannot keep up with its constant invention of new “rights,” then they certainly can’t shame others for failing to do so.
Pursuing Unity: Race and the American Story
The primary cause of American disintegration is not the proliferation of sources of division, but rather the absence of sources of unity to counterbalance and contextualize them. The racial divide is the most productive place to start in recovering the American mission and restoring national unity.
In Defense of Elizabeth Harman: Taking Pro-Choice Philosophers Seriously
If we believe that all human beings deserve respect, we ought to act like it. That means we should use our rational faculties to understand and answer bad arguments, not ridicule those who make them.
Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization
Any defense of the West must be clear about those core commitments to reason and the reasonable God that are central to its identity.
Religion and Politics at the Dinner Table: Challenging the Old Maxim
In an age increasingly marked by incivility, we need places where we can learn (or relearn) the practice of civil disagreement. The family is uniquely suited to serve as a training ground for this crucial virtue.
American Abortion, American Freedom
Like slavery, abortion has become in the leftist mind the central political issue, on which the economic and social liberties of the modern United States all hang.
Unconventional Women: Documenting the Diversity of the Pro-Life Movement
A new book showcases the diversity of the pro-life movement by documenting the unconventional pro-life activism of five women.
Qatar: America’s Troublesome Little Ally
The Saudi-Qatari feud is empowering Turkey and Iran, thereby changing the geopolitical map of the Middle East.
A Fascist in the White House? Federalism as an Antidote to Authoritarianism
Any scholar or commentator who truly worries about the prospect of fascism or nationalist tyranny should favor the restoration of a more robust American federalism, with more powers exercised by the states and fewer powers assigned to the national government.
A Tale of Two Sams: You Should Not Actively Euthanize Your Baby
Philosopher Gary Comstock reports that, in hindsight, he would have actively euthanized his terminally ill son. I’ve known his anguish; my son, also named Sam, was also diagnosed with trisomy 18. He took his final breaths five hours after his birth, as I held him in my arms. But I reject the remedy Comstock offers as a solution to this suffering.
Does the Right Have a Future? Assessing the Conservative-Libertarian Debate
Nathan Schlueter and Nikolai Wenzel’s book-length conservative-libertarian debate is a helpful tool for understanding an important conversation and provides the basis for a robust defense of liberty in the public sphere.
The Constitution Already Prohibits Abortion: An Originalist Case for Prenatal Personhood
Justice Antonin Scalia, an originalist, famously held that the Constitution neither permits nor prohibits abortion. On the contrary, unborn babies are “persons” within the original public meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, and they are consequently owed due process and equal protection on constitutional grounds.
Contraceptive Access and Declining Teen Birth Rates: A Connection Still Unproven
Among sexually active teens, birth control use is on the rise and teen pregnancy on the decline. While the media have jumped at the chance to suggest that the one is the cause of the other, the studies cited—explicitly—do not bear out this conclusion.
