“This Land Is Our Land” challenges the immigration status quo and presents conservatives and liberals alike with the opportunity to examine an immigrant’s take on the number one issue dividing our nation.
Pillar: Politics & Law
Politics & Law
The third pillar of a decent society is a just system of politics and law. Such a government does not bind all persons, families, institutions of civil society, and actors in the marketplace to itself as subservient features of an all-pervading authority. Instead, it honors and protects the inherent equal dignity of all persons, safeguards the family as the primary school of virtue, and seeks justice through the rule of law.
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Russell Kirk’s Guidance on Community and Local Government Is as Necessary As Ever
In a nation whose communities have declined, and in a republic in which disagreement on first principles now includes topics that previous generations imagined could not be contested, the moral order must be rebuilt in local communities.
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Nationalism as Religion: The Proper Love of Place in Today’s Politics
Christians should be wary of the substitution of the nation for the church. Instead, they should seek a vibrant localism allows people to find meaning in their local communities—especially religious communities—and impart that sense of purpose and belonging that nationalists rightly perceive is missing for many citizens.
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Surrogacy, Love, and Flourishing
Surrogacy is dehumanizing to both birth mother and child, because it reduces them to commodities. By design, it denies mother and child what they need to flourish as human beings.
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False Dichotomies, the Common Good, and the Future of Conservatism
David French, Sohrab Ahmari, and others who are debating the future of conservatism are right to think that the challenges facing our nation are grave. Still, we need not feel forced into cheering for one side or the other, into viewing this as a matter of “teams.” We conservatives need to keep the main focus on ideas, not personalities, and engage each other both robustly and charitably. We need to think prudently about practical steps we should take—here and now, given all the givens—that will promote the common good.
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Stigmatizing and Prosecuting Pornography
Unless adults are willing to make dramatic changes to their own moral and legal rules about pornography, we shall keep playing what amounts to game of Russian roulette with the formation of our children when it comes to one of the most precious parts of their lives.
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Chasing The Roots of the Venezuelan Collapse
In order to flourish economically, property rights must be secure and the rule of law must exist.
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Toward a Productive Discussion About Immigration
Among the universal, fundamental rights every person enjoys is the right to leave his nation of origin. Yet the right to leave does not entail the right to enter a specific nation.
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The 3395 Project: American National Identity Includes Both the Ideals of 1776 and the Legacy of 1619
The 1619 Project points us to the need for the 3395 Project—the project of constructing a new and stronger American identity that incorporates both the experiences, perspectives, and distinctive contributions of the descendants of enslaved Africans (1619) and also the aspirations and ideals enunciated by European Americans in the Declaration of Independence (1776).
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Some Thoughts for New Law Students
Law students shouldn’t be content with shallow conceptions of law. Instead, they should look deeper, asking questions about the nature and destiny of the human person, and the connection between our human nature and the legal enterprise.
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Too Many Abraham Lincolns
Like Abraham Lincoln, a growing number of our young people are “unchurched.” As a result, our “us vs. them” politics functions as a substitute for religious observance, membership, and devotion. If there were more authentic religious practice in our society, there might be less of the bitterly partisan politics that divide our country.
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Assisted Suicide: The Ethics, the Laws, and the Dangers
The people most harmed by this agenda are seriously ill people hearing from society and physicians that death by overdose will end their problems; other patients suffering from a reduced commitment to care; people with disabilities who are next in line to be seen as a “burden” on others; and lonely and depressed people of any age, seduced by the message that suicide is a positive solution. Adapted from a lecture delivered in June 2019 at the Vita Institute, an educational program for pro-life leaders sponsored by the University of Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture.
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Renewing Reason in Our Local Communities
If we want to rebuild our country, we must rebuild our local communities. To rebuild communities, we must rebuild a culture of reasoned discourse.
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Hannah Arendt: Thinking Pariah
Hannah Arendt has been unjustly transformed into a political partisan for the liberal causes that are in vogue today. Letting Arendt speak for herself recovers her intellectual independence as someone who defined herself apart from and against the political traditions of her day—including progressive liberalism.
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A Storm Is Brewing in the Americas
A sexual orientation discrimination case could upend religious freedom for all the countries in the Americas in the near future . . . and nobody knows about it.
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On Residential City Streets, People Are More Important Than Parking
Whole blocks in densely populated cities like New York are designed primarily for the movement and storage of vehicles. These massive amounts of land would be better used as community parks.
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Between Gods and Men: Natural Law and Religious Pluralism
Only natural law stands “between gods and men.” It employs human reason and observation, yet it admits of a divine creator behind nature—and therefore something inherently normative about naturally given ends. Without this intermediary, neither conflicts between divine law and human law nor conflicts between different religions can end in anything other than continuous conflict.
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On Conservative Women’s Conspicuous Absence from Political Discourse
If we are wondering why conservative women are not “showing up,” we should start by revisiting the concept that women’s nature is uniquely oriented toward private, family-oriented pursuits—and asking whether it’s worth holding onto.
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Pro-Lifers Should Be Wary of Empty Pro-Life Rhetoric
Pro-life Democrat Michael Wear is right to be concerned about the 2020 Democratic candidates’ radical positions on abortion. But Wear’s suggestions for those candidates are long on political expediency and short on actual pro-life conviction. Pro-life voters shouldn’t let themselves be taken in by the deceptive “messaging” he recommends.
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The Misery of Democratic Socialism
Bernie Sanders has openly declared “democratic socialism” as his guiding political and economic vision. Yet democratic socialism is incoherent as a philosophy and toxic as a way of economic and civil organization. It inevitably collapses into the abusive and destructive twentieth-century socialism we are familiar with. We should reject it unconditionally.
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Immigration and the Desire for Rootedness
National conservatives need to help create an America that knows who she is, one that can give immigrants more than just a place to get a job—an America that can draw them in, giving them a sense of belonging. This essay is based on remarks delivered at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, on July 15, 2019.
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Should Social Conservatives Embrace Nationalism?
Could a new national conservative coalition enable Burkean conservatives to harness populist energy, using public policy to strengthen the core American institutions of family, religion, and country? Or will it inevitably degenerate into dehumanizing racism and xenophobia?
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“Do No Harm”: Not As Simple As It Sounds
The “Do No Harm” Act would gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by removing religious liberty protections that result in “harm” to others. That would be a mistake. Protection of any First Amendment rights inherently involves balancing competing harms on both sides of the ledger.
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Sailing on the Ship of Fools
The values America’s elites cherish are not the incontestable truth of things, and they may even run counter to the deeper truths of American politics and human life. Those who aspire to lead our country—and to deserve to lead it—would do well to ponder these lessons by reading Tucker Carlson’s Ship of Fools.
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Can Unalienable Rights Be Rescued from Human Rights?
Can the US Commission on Unalienable Rights help correct the international human rights paradigm? It all depends on how brave the Trump Administration and Secretary Pompeo are in translating the suggestions of the commission into public policy—both for the State Department and the United Nations.