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Pillar

Education & Culture

The fourth pillar, education and culture, is built upon the recognition of two essential realities. First, the Western intellectual tradition requires a dedication to and desire for truth. Second, education takes place not only within colleges and universities but within our broader culture, whose institutions and practices form us as whole persons.

Americans Are Skipping School

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Capitalism, Conservatives, and the Intellectuals: A Reply to Matthew McManus

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Not only are there many forms of capitalism, but intellectuals exert great influence in determining what type of economy we embrace—for better and for worse.

Amy Barrett, Augustine, and the Relationship between Religion and Politics

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The irony of media coverage of Amy Barrett’s confirmation hearings is that, in fact, Barrett is the one arguing for the truth that religion and politics need to be separated. She believes this because of her Catholic faith, not in spite of it.

The Playboy Lifestyle and the Death of Sexual Complementarity

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The Playboy account of complementarity is nothing more than an intellectualization of domination and dehumanization. Though some envision Hugh Hefner as a martini-drinking gentleman surrounded by beautiful women, it is better to think of him as a coward.

Christianity and American Founding Principles: A Response to Patrick Deneen and Robert Reilly

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When it comes to Christianity, the Enlightenment, and the American Founding, Patrick Deneen and Robert Reilly are both right.

Betraying Liberal Education: A Response to President Paxson of Brown University

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Today’s universities are allergic to making substantive claims about what it means to live well in a good society. But liberal education, rightly understood, is a long, arduous apprenticeship of self-mastery.

Socratic Reason, Free Speech, and White Supremacists

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Pretending that our government is neutral actually undermines our rights, since a government that enforces manmade “rights” while denying their basis in reality moves dangerously close to using force without right—the very essence of tyranny.

Corrupting the Youth? A Response to Reilly

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There is no distinctive Catholic political philosophy today, and Robert Reilly’s call to man the battlements of classical liberalism is an attempt to short-circuit the possibility of a real revival of Catholic political thought in America.

No Long-Term Harm? The New Scientific Silence on Child-Adult Sex and the Age of Consent

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Two new studies use a small amount of old data to try to undermine the idea that it is abusive or damaging for adults to have sex with minors. Disturbingly, no one seems to be challenging this conclusion.

Richard III and the Machiavellian Madness of Postmodernity

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The reasons for Richard’s demise constitute a warning about a deadly Machiavellian madness to which contemporary society is highly susceptible.

The Wisdom of the Neocons

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Drawing on the wisdom of the neocons might point us towards a harder, but ultimately more fruitful, approach to our current political problems.

The Consuming Self

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Americans increasingly identify with our consumption. When combined with political tribalism, the result is the increasing refusal to do business with members of other political or cultural groups. In the end, an identity based on consumption will only consume itself.

Political Theory, Travel, and the Love of Home

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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A philosophy professor reflects on the poor arguments that convince his students of the justice of abortion.

National Sovereignty and the Challenge of Immigration

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The idea of national sovereignty is indispensable to any coherent discussion of immigration policy.

Pursuing Unity: Race and the American Story

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Contraceptive Access and Declining Teen Birth Rates: A Connection Still Unproven

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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.

Capitalism and the Quest for Community

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Defenders of capitalism need a more humane anthropology, sensitive to man’s social and communal nature, lest they forget to ask the crucial question of what economics is for.

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