Natural Rights, Self-Defense, and the Right to Own Firearms
We have a moral right to own guns.
Disagreement, Discrimination, and Polarization: An Open Letter to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Justice Ginsburg’s claim in Masterpiece Cakeshop is deeply troublesome and problematic. Mistakenly asserted, it adds to the aggravated polarization within the United States.
The Dangerous Effects of Surrogacy: A Review of A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India
The structure of the surrogacy market does not enhance individual freedom. Surrogate mothers are willing to abide by the rules imposed by the clinic and the intended parents in their desperation to bring their families out of poverty.
Transing California Foster Children & Why Doctors Like Us Opposed It
California’s AB2119 should not be law. Signing the bill is a triumph of ideology posing as science. Human beings should be affirmed, not false identities and sexual confusion.
Happy Deficit Day!
Reasonable people can claim that the government of the richest country in human history should provide certain things to its poorer citizens. But reasonable people cannot claim those things come without a price.
A Protestant Look at the Dogmatic Timidity of the Current Roman Catholic Synod
Instrumentum Laboris points to a church that seems to be losing sight of sin, redemption, grace, faith, the sacraments, and eternal destiny. The Catholic Church could well be exchanging her theological birthright for a Mass of sociological potage.
C.S. Lewis and Aristotle on Civic Friendship
Aristotle described three types of friendship. In a season of increased polarization and even calls for incivility from national political leaders, perhaps we need a fourth.
From the Great Recession to the Great Divide: Business and Economics in the Last Decade
Americans today are anxious—not just financially, but socially. We despair even though we are materially better off than at any other time in human history. What happened? How did we get here?
A Decade of Acceleration and Resentment: The Cultural Impact of an Ideology of Equality
If there is one thing that the prophets of egalitarian ideology cannot abide, it is the true and sincere believer in normativity—the person who judges that we are, each and every one of us, beholden to exercise our freedom in keeping with a higher law.
Politics & Law: The Way of Public Discourse
For ten years, Public Discourse has drawn on the insights of academics and scholars, political and legal advocates, and men and women of letters to offer the reading public thought-provoking reflections on the timeliest issues and the most timeless dilemmas of our public life.
The Future of American Sexuality and Family: Five Key Trends
We find ourselves in a liminal spot, one between long-taken-for-granted traditional relationships anchored in marriage and the future relationship system characterized more consistently by “confluent love.” There will not be two dominant systems.
Respect for the Dignity of Every Human Person: The First Pillar of a Decent Society
As our public debate coarsens and weakens, Public Discourse will continue to publish respectful, rigorous arguments. We will continue to stand up for the rights and dignity of the most vulnerable members of society.
The Future of Public Discourse
For the past ten years, Public Discourse has been a different kind of website—thoughtful, calm, and civil, even while defending unpopular truths. In our next decade, we want to keep improving, reaching more people, and addressing a broader array of topics.
The Chinese Social Monitoring System and Why Americans Should Take Note
Those who value freedom of conscience and faith need to realize that the Orwellian Chinese system is not cartoonish hype: it’s a real system coming soon to a country near you.
Fostering Free Expression in Higher Education
Choose an institution that has adopted the Chicago Principles, and then learn how to shed light on the dark corners of inquiry, and of your own mind.
The Character Gap: Understanding Our Moral Mediocrity
Christian Miller’s scientific approach to understanding moral character is impressive, and it allows him to reach a public that is inclined only to trust the empirical. Yet this method severely restricts the conclusions Miller feels justified to make.
Capitulating to Bullies: Brown University and the Transgender Lobby vs. Science
Brown University researcher Lisa Littman has been attacked for publishing results that call into question the politically correct narrative about transgender youth.
Our Universal and Particular Constitution
Understood as an expression of the common law commitments on which it was built, our Constitution still supplies common terms in which we might re-transform our civic discourse into something rational and productive. The second in a two-part series.
The Parallels Between Karamazov and Kavanaugh
Justice is something we must establish every day—in the way we live with others, in the way we speak humbly and attend to all the facts patiently, in deference to reality and the truth of things.
The Thousands-Year Old Constitution
Our Constitution is not just positive law, stipulated and contingent on political will. American constitutions do incorporate pre-positive law, often expressly. And that law is neither mere text, nor axioms, nor political ideals. The first in a two-part series.
Changing Society’s View on “Hooking Up”
Unmoored from a committed and loving marital relationship, the unchecked sex drive harms both the individual and the society in which he or she lives.
