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Featured Conversations

We work hard at every level of the editorial process to ensure that our essays are well-crafted, that our language is precise and that our arguments are sound. But most of all, we want to encourage and teach our readers to appreciate a well-formed argument, even if they ultimately come to a different conclusion than we do.
Strap in, everyone, for we need to acknowledge that what is called for now is a generational effort, likely to be multi-generational, to recover reality. And it all requires the family. As the family goes, so goes our society. The flashpoint at the university, in the end, is far downstream from what is happening in the family.
The truth lurking inside the great morass of opinions, questions, and fears about the human condition is that a confluence of factors leads to greater personal, familial, and communal flourishing.
Reflections on right reason plus a roundup of this month's essays
Reflections on hope, plus a roundup of this month's essays
Tension is something we at Public Discourse strive to handle well. Ours is a voice of reason, moderation, and calm even as storms swirl around us. The kind and thoughtful operation of reason always leaves peace, not awkwardness, not lingering tension, in its wake. 
Such technocratic management, incapable of moral action, is, I suggest, what Magerman notes at Penn. But, alas, it is true of far too many of our institutions and those who manage them. Not so at Public Discourse, however, and not so for those educated in older, richer, wiser traditions of moral reflection and judgment—and thus of action. Our essays this past month are full of such riches.
Conflict is underway. Even already, so early in what could be a protracted war, the suffering is profound, the loss grievous and terrible. Things are almost certainly to become worse. It’s only natural, only human, to blanch at such pain, to avert one’s eyes, and wish for it to cease. But such sentiments, so natural and understandable, do not obviate the need to understand, deliberate, and judge according to the rule and demands of justice.
Back-to-school reflections, plus a roundup of this month’s essays
Reflections on college drop-off and the centrality of kids to the human experience - plus, a roundup of this month's essays
A welcome from the new managing editor, plus a review of this month’s essays.
Rather than sandlot games and diving contests, June is, for us, a month of contested visions about the body, about sex, gender, race, birth, and death. Perhaps the poet was wrong in declaring April the cruelest month—perhaps that title should go to June.