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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.

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Although they are often attacked as being ahistorical or obsolete, New Critical methods of interpreting literature can help students become better readers who see the value in literature, ambiguity, and the search for meaning.
Hidden behind misleading terminology, the facts emerge: emergency contraceptives such as Ella and hormonal IUDs can and do cause abortions
The Common Core exists only because we have forgotten that parents have a right to educate their children. The state has no educational authority of its own apart from what parents delegate to it.
The home and the office pull in opposite directions, but modern mothers can assemble a team on both ends of the rope to help them manage that tension—and they can learn to thrive in the process.
With optimism, precision, and intellectual elegance, Russell Kirk’s “The Conservative Mind” defined what it meant to be an American conservative for the second half of the twentieth century.
Kevin Doyle’s review of Robert George's new book is based on a fundamental error. Conscience, rightly understood, is not simply self-will. Rather, conscience identifies one’s duties under the moral law.
The French philosopher Montesquieu’s principle of moderation taught the founders to reconcile Lockean liberalism, classical republicanism, and Christianity—a balance we could use today.
Women should not view professional success and loving motherhood as at odds with each other. Instead, women ought to cultivate an authentic and creative form of excellence that engages the whole person, with all her talents, in relation with others.
When President Obama lied about the Affordable Care Act, he substituted his own self-governance and self-constitution for that of the American people.
Conservatives need to refine their understanding and presentation of the moral substance of their cause, crafting a message that appeals to both reason and imagination.
Just as an engineer can work out the purpose of a machine by examining its structure, reason can discover the proper end of human action by examining human nature. Yet there is also a supernatural morality that subsumes and exceeds natural moral standards.
We don’t need to know that God exists to know good from bad. It is enough to know human nature—what kind of being we are and what kind of actions will bring us to fullness of being.
We have the worst of both worlds: a Prohibitionary State that gives license to all kinds of evil, but that regulates and restricts actions that are not evil, to manage the chaos that results from the license.
National Coming Out Day’s emphasis on “celebrating” students’ self-identification as LGBT undermines Notre Dame’s pastoral responsibility to help students develop an integrated sexual identity and a true understanding of human dignity.
Faith-based dorms at secular universities offer a positive alternative to the indoctrination and debasement present on many campuses.
NoFap, an anonymous online community devoted to helping its “Fapstronaut” members overcome their addictions to masturbation and pornography, lends credence to traditional moral teachings and offers important insights for defenders of sexual morality.
New neurological research reveals that porn is as potently addictive as heroin or cocaine.
Law cannot replace a nation’s customs, manners, and traditions. Rather, it should strengthen them by corroborating and invigorating the ways of a people.
Adults are bending time and space to satisfy their desire for children by adopting long-frozen embryos.
Higher education is not a guarantee for success. Young people need not only a high quality education and strong economic opportunities, but also the integral social bonds that come from a society that defends freedom of religion and association, as well as healthy marriages.
David L. Tubbs’ criticism of pragmatic liberalism reveals that he misunderstands both the necessary complexity of constitutional law and its relation to civil society.
In contemporary America, condemnation of pedophilia rests on sentiment and not on moral reasoning. Nobody can simultaneously explain why pedophilia is so vile and uphold the first commandment of the sexual revolution: Fulfill thy desires.
We can only define ourselves authentically in terms of, in Charles Taylor’s words, a “backdrop of things that matter”—a set of values that transcend our arbitrary choices. The second of a two-part series.
Our current jargon of “authenticity” is an affront to political friendship—it demands that others always capitulate to our claims, and makes not doing so tantamount to harm. The first of a two-part series.

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