Lessons from Gettysburg: A Conversation with Professor Allen Guelzo
For Abraham Lincoln, the victory at Gettysburg appeared almost as a ratification of the Declaration of Independence and its principles.
Systemic Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System Is Not a Myth
Many on both the left and the right tend to speak of systemic racism simply as a 0/1 state: either the system is fundamentally and inextricably racist or it is not racist at all. But recognizing distinct mechanisms at play in a racialized system should help us see systemic racial bias as a matter of degrees—as something that can improve or worsen over time. Indeed, research suggests that racial disparities have been declining over time, though there is no guarantee of inevitable progress, and our present situation makes it clear that we still have a long way to go.
Casual Sex and the Crisis of Campus Sexual Assault
Many critics of the new Title IX revisions regarding campus sexual assault think that a healthy hook-up culture is achievable. However, they must contend with the fact that sexual assault and casual sex share an underlying premise: sexual desire takes priority over other considerations.
Modern Technology and Our Longing for Belonging
Eric Jacobsen’s new book, Three Pieces of Glass, explores how the car, television, and smartphone undermine belonging in America today.
Systemic Racism, God’s Grace, and the Human Heart: What the Bible Teaches About Structural Sin
Sin corrupts every institution and every system because, one way or another, sinful human beings are involved. This means that laws, policies, habits, and customs are also corrupted by sin. We are called to do everything within our power to expunge sin from the structures of our society. Christians know that the justice of God demands that we do so. At the same time, we cannot accept that the structural manifestations of sin are the heart of the problem. No, the heart of the problem is found in the sinfulness of the individual human heart.
A New Birth for American Civil Rights
Christians are called not only to pray but also to act for justice, because faith without works is dead. Today, we are called to give new birth to the civil rights movement, to finally fulfill the promise of the American civil rights project for which so many fought and died.
Above the Law: The Data Are In on Police, Killing, and Race
Police killing is not the work of vigilant warriors defending society at great personal cost, and sometimes going too far. It is the day-in, day-out petty tyranny of a taxpayer-funded bureaucratic lobby group. The difference is that, unlike other public sector unions, police unions have military-grade equipment they can use to violently crush protests against their abuses, and they are legally immune from most consequences. They’re teachers’ unions, but with tanks and endless get-out-of-jail-free cards.
The Blindness of Justice Gorsuch’s Woke Textualism
Neither the intent nor the letter of the Civil Rights Act, nor the Court’s own jurisprudence, compels sex blindness. The judges who have failed to see this truth are not “woke.” They’re asleep on the job.
Revisiting Alasdair MacIntyre on Liberal Toleration
In some respects, Alasdair MacIntyre offers strong arguments in favor of political liberalism. At the same time, he offers critiques for both liberalism’s proponents and opponents.
Isolation Cinema, Father’s Day Edition
The best depictions of fathers in classic films.
Black Lives Matter: Affirm the Sentence, Not the Movement
“Black lives matter,” taken as a sentence, is profoundly true. God made every human being in his image, which means every life on the planet, at every stage, matters. Yet that sentence is understood, nearly universally, as expressing approval of a movement rooted in critical race theory, which is grounded in destructive Marxist ideology.
Alexander Hamilton and American Nationalism, in His Time and Ours
Although Alexander Hamilton is regularly invoked by contemporary American nationalists to lend legitimacy to their positions, his nationalism differs significantly from theirs.
The Supreme Court’s Mistaken and Misguided Sex Discrimination Ruling
Justice Gorsuch’s position would either require the elimination of all sex-specific programs and facilities or allow access based on an individual’s subjective identity rather than his or her objective biology. When Gorsuch claims that “transgender status [is] inextricably bound up with sex” because “transgender status” is defined precisely in opposition to sex, he presumes the very sex binary his opinion will help to further erode.
Was It All for This? The Failure of the Conservative Legal Movement
The bargain has never been explicitly articulated, but religious conservatives know what it is. The bargain is that you go along with the party establishment, you support their policies and priorities—or at least keep your mouth shut about it—and, in return, the establishment will put some judges on the bench who supposedly will protect your constitutional rights to freedom of worship, to freedom of exercise. How has that worked out for us?
Where (Not) to Begin with the Common Good
The common good is the flourishing of a community qua community. Every community is built around a common end, which is simply that it excel, in justice, as whatever kind of emergently real community it is. The common good is primarily a practical idea, but if our starting point is too practical we are apt to miss the challenge that the common good poses to the modern political imaginary. On the other hand, a starting point that is too metaphysical will fail to engage the real questions of common life.
Life Lessons: Four Pillars, Three Little Pigs
We have limited time. So how should we use it? What will our lives mean when we finally look back on them? Like it or not, we inevitably choose a path, either by our love or refusal to love; by our actions or our refusals to act.
Liberal Learning beyond Liberalism: The Humanities as Soulcraft in the Renaissance and Today
Liberal justifications of liberal education are no longer effective. Teachers of humanities need a different way of defending the value of what we do and love. The Renaissance can teach us how to make a case for the study of old books that is compatible with the values of a pluralist society.
The Greatest and First Commandment
Mark Galli’s new book When Did We Start Forgetting God? is a call not to look outward or inward, but upward: to worship God simply for the sake of worshiping God.
We Need a “Manhattan Project” for Racial Reconciliation
Fifty years from now, no one will care about May’s job numbers or the rocket launch. But they will remember whether—in the face of 400 years of pain and oppression—the president of the United States took decisive and bold action to heal this nation of its racist past and present through a particular and sustained national effort.
Pressing Pause on the Global Transgender Youth Pandemic
Before Covid-19’s pernicious spread, another health phenomenon had reached epidemic proportions and is still occurring on a global level. Unlike the virus, its vulnerable population is the young—especially young girls.
On the Unjust Death of George Floyd and Racism in America
The fact is, many in positions of power and influence are oblivious or unaware of the unique challenges disproportionately facing African American communities across this country. We must now acknowledge these challenges and address these disparities that they create. The only way forward is to treat each other with the empathy and respect required of a people who have decided to share a nation—and a future.
Lessons from King, Tocqueville, and Augustine on Loving Our Black Neighbors
As a nation, all citizens, regardless of color, need to respond to the persistent threat of institutional racism and persistent police brutality as if their own person was at stake. We must act to preserve life and the common good as quickly as if we were trying to preserve our own property from looting.
Expanding Euthanasia during the Pandemic
It seems particularly disturbing to imagine legalizing euthanasia in this moment, let alone expanding access to euthanasia if it is already legal. Even so, this is precisely what is underway in Canada.
Isolation Bookshelf: Classic Texts on the Problem of Justice
Accommodation and half measures—the stuff of everyday political life—will not do when we encounter the politics of mastery and subjugation. Aristotle’s “partnership of free persons” demands more.
