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Pillar

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.

Cicero on Our Disengaged Age 

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Leviathan, Hobbes

Natural Law for a Lawless People

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Hobbes’ thin conception of natural law cannot sustain all the activities of a fully flourishing community, but it does appeal to those who live in fear of losing their basic security. Many people are possessed by that fear today, as many were in Hobbes’ time. But we have much to lose if the Hobbesian view of law prevails.

A Tale of Two Countries: How Norway Embraces Markets While Venezuela Does Not

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When people quickly compare the Norwegian and Venezuelan economies, they tend to see the one trait they have in common: a big public sector. However, when we study these countries in depth, it becomes evident that the two follow opposite economic principles. While Norway’s economy is among the freest in the world, Venezuela has become a prime example of what a socialist economy looks like.
Person Looking out on Water

The Unavoidable Uncertainty of This Pandemic

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An excessive desire for certainty about COVID-19 is leading to counter-productive responses. We must make decisions based upon the limited information we have, and then execute those decisions with conviction. But let us have the humility to admit when we are wrong.
Clearing

Ingratitude, Mob Violence, and Providence

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Our culture’s deep ingratitude is the long, nihilistic outworking of the logic of modern thought itself. When human experience is reduced to only will and power struggle, there no room for gratefulness. Those of us who have not renounced cosmic order and the providence that brings that order to fulfillment, by contrast, know that all things willed or permitted by God work for good. Thus we should be grateful—profoundly grateful—for everything.

Will European Nationalists Ever Stop LGBT and Pro-Abortion EU Diplomacy?

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Even though European nationalist parties have been in power for over a decade in Hungary and coming close to a decade in Poland, the EU diplomatic machinery continues to aggressively promote abortion rights and the LGBTQ agenda at the United Nations and around the world

Isolation Bookshelf: Hail to the Chief

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Can the American people and their representatives set aside their immediate interests and attachments and “think constitutionally” about the presidency, and about how we choose presidents? Some scholars hope so. But the passionate partisanship of the most attentive Americans, and the inattentiveness and apathy of the least partisan Americans, make this hope seem forlorn indeed.
Pro-Life Sign

Josh Hawley and the Advantages of Jujitsu

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Senator Hawley should turn the tables during confirmation hearings and force Democrats to defend their abortion extremism. What’s more, he should act on precedents stemming from the days of Lincoln down to our own, precedents involving the authority of the political branches to counter at times and limit the holdings of the Supreme Court.
United States Capitol

Why Finding Justices Who Will Overturn Roe v. Wade Hasn’t Been Easy, And What to Do About It

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Any effort to seat justices who will overturn Roe needs to take account of the serious political obstacles that stand in the way. We must not surrender in the face of these obstacles. But we must recognize them in order to navigate through them.
Lady Justice

Senator Hawley’s Judicial Test on Roe v. Wade Won’t Work

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Political realities can be confronted and transformed, but they cannot simply be imagined away. Unfortunately, Senator Hawley’s pro-life litmus test promises no more success in the future than it would have had in the past.
American parade

The Role of the United States in the Revitalization of the International Human Rights Project

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We must not forget that there were stark disagreements over what human rights consisted of at the dawn of the international human rights project in 1948. It was the focus on a common denominator upon which all States could agree that allowed for an international human rights framework to emerge. The US Commission on Unalienable Rights is right to encourage a recommitment to this vision if we are to save the international human rights project.
Polyamorous Family

Poly Parenting and the Value of the Family

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The emerging discussion about in vitro gametogenesis and other types of multi-parent technologies demands renewed attention to why children do well with only two parents, and why those parents do best to procreate in the ordinary way, even with all its inefficiencies, burdens, and failures.

Why the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights Should Not Ignore Abortion

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Despite many excellent elements, the Commission’s first report falls short where it matters most. The right to life is the most fundamental right, the one on which all authentic human rights depend. The commission may revise the initial draft of the report following a public comment period. If the foremost experts on human rights in the United States could not agree that international human rights law affords children in the womb any protections at all, how can Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his team be expected to contradict them in American diplomacy?
Public Discourse

Reconsidering the Statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln

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In many ways, Abraham Lincoln has almost loomed entirely too largely in our national consciousness, since it has now become difficult to get around the acknowledgment of his greatness to discover just what it was that made him great. Jon Schaff’s new book is an attempt to do just that.

Hiroshima and the “Easy” Thing to Do

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The just war ethic cannot justify the intentional killing of some innocents for the sake of defending the lives of other innocents because the lives of the innocent are the actual point of war. We go to war on behalf of the innocent men and women wronged by some act against their nation. We fight that war by the morality able to name that wrong as a wrong, and able to express that wrong by the means employed in its vindication.
economics

The Trouble with Industrial Policy

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There are good reasons to believe that industrial policy significantly undermines rather than bolsters the common good.
Hawley

Judicial Nominees Must Explicitly Acknowledge That Roe Was Wrongly Decided

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Roe v. Wade is no secondary issue. It is not something to be pushed to the side of the nomination process. Roe is central. Roe is a window into the constitutional worldview of a would-be justice. It is a measure of their sense of what a justice should be. That is why I say today that I will vote only for Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. Adapted from a speech given on the floor of the Senate by Senator Hawley on June 30, 2020.
Notre Dame

The Church Has the Form of a City

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The book of Acts shows that the Catholic Church has the form of a city in which a specific work is conducted. That work of sanctification has its source in the sacrifice of the Mass, which the state must allow the Church to continue celebrating as much as possible. This essay originally appeared in French and is translated here for the first time.
iPhone

“Going Dark” and the Politics of Software Code

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Apple has been entangled in several recent controversies over its decision to adopt unbreakable encryption for its iPhone. The company has inscribed an absolute right to privacy in its code and, in so doing, has failed to take into account the proper moral and legal limits on that right. Other technological solutions should be considered that could balance the rights of physical security and privacy.
Reading

Thought, “the World,” and Education

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Inwardness, intellectual or otherwise, is the source and the safeguard of individual human flourishing, without which no community is judged to do well. Individuals must experience their learning as a mode of freedom and spontaneity, not a complex navigation of yet another structure of authority and achievement.
Capitol

Two Cheers for Politics

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The intellectual life and political life are distinct elements of the human good, but they mutually support one another.
Hamilton

Hamiltonianism and the American Nation: A Response to Carson Holloway and Bradford P. Wilson

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Carson Holloway and Bradford P. Wilson’s critique of my interpretation of Alexander Hamilton’s place vis-à-vis contemporary American nationalism makes legitimate points but also misreads important features of Hamilton’s thought and the new nationalism.
Hamilton

Hamiltonian Nationalism: A Response to Samuel Gregg

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Samuel Gregg admonishes us that Hamilton was really “a different kind of nationalist from those that claim this mantle in our time.” While we yield to no one in our respect for Gregg, we think he has gone astray here: partly by overlooking some relevant aspects of Hamilton’s thought, and partly by mischaracterizing today’s American nationalism.

The State of Social Conservatism and the Role of Public Discourse

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Public Discourse offers social conservatives precisely the type of forum that the particular challenges of our time demand. In the face of countless challenges to our familiar assumptions about politics, law, and economics, we need an honest and robust conversation among people who share the same basic moral commitments but defend widely different policies on the basis of those commitments.
Supreme Court

Religious Liberty Is Important, But It’s Not Enough

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The religious liberty triumphs of the past several days are important, but they’re not enough. Not nearly so. We need to contend about the truth of the matter. Through legislation and litigation, we need to make it clear that it’s lawful to act on the convictions that we are created male and female and that male and female are created for each other. Privacy and safety at a shelter, equality on an athletic field, and good medicine are at stake for everyone—religious or not.

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