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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.

The End of a Regime? Understanding the Extraction of Maduro

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Neither Straussian nor MacIntyrean: The Politics of Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option”

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Ironically, for all his fierce criticisms of it, Dreher operates very much within the school of American conservatism. He follows in the footsteps of the same pessimists who emerged in conservative political thought a few decades ago.

Neuhaus and Liberalism

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A liberal polity is a conversational polity: it comprises human beings bound together in argument, aspiring to order their common life through the exercise of persuasion, not the application of power. A liberal society is therefore a special kind of intentional community.

How Europe’s Way of Denial Became a Way of Death

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Europe’s immigration woes underscore how much of the continent is living in untruth—in lies that gradually kill.

Assault Weapons, Defense, and the Resistance to Tyranny

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On some rights—such as the right to life—there is no room for compromise. But assault weapons seem an appropriate point of compromise for proponents of a right to bear arms.

Marriage and Family Life Cannot be Privatized

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The existence of each political community depends on married adults having children and raising them to responsible adulthood.

The Vatican Cannot Ignore China’s Religious Persecution and Human Rights Abuses

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Millions of Chinese sacrifice daily for the freedom to worship the Trinity as their God in communion with Rome. Rather than appeasing the Chinese government and capitulating to its demands, the Vatican would do well to admonish its leaders instead.

Catholicism, Labor Unions, and the Courts

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The Janus case is not an attack on unionism. It is an attempt to place unions on an equal footing with all other private organizations who have a right to organize, solicit members, and advocate what they believe.

Law, Liberalism, and Luther: Beyond the Myths

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Contrary to the popular, tidy narrative repeated by Robert Reilly and others, neither Luther nor his colleagues and heirs “abandoned” natural law. Nor did they recast it in a voluntarist mold. They embraced and defended it along entirely traditional lines.

Dishonoring the Dead: Moral and Constitutional Considerations on Fetal Disposition

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Texas’s humane dispositions aren’t about trying to sneakily ban abortion. They’re about whether states will be coerced to affirm abortion as a positive good rather than merely tolerating it as a tragic necessity.

Is Medieval Christianity the Solution to the Crisis of American Protestantism?

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A new book seeks to diagnose the ills of contemporary Protestantism and, with help from C.S. Lewis, prescribes a course of treatment drawn from the rich history of Christianity.

Beyond Roe: A Global Roadmap for the Pro-Life Movement

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We have reached a tipping point. Either abortion will be taken out of UN policy altogether, or it will be enshrined as an international right.

Could A Preemptive Strike on North Korea or Iran Be Morally Justified?

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If mutually assured destruction no longer seems effective in dealing with the threat of nuclear attack by North Korea and Iran, what military options remain and what moral principles can guide their employment?

Religious Discrimination in Canada

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Canada takes pride in being a progressive nation, but our government is relying on the same tired excuses for religious discrimination that the United States Supreme Court dismissed more than fifty years ago.

Notre Dame Swallows the Pill

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The University has announced it is to be the sole funder, unaccompanied proprietor, and director of distribution of what it has solemnly declared for years to be an immoral service. But the Holy Spirit is not a consequentialist. God does not want us to weigh up pros and cons of adhering to the moral truth. And the greatest respect we can show others is to bear faithful witness to the truth.

Germain Grisez, Christian Philosopher

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The whole of Grisez’s account of this sense of Christian philosophy repays study, not least as an exploration of the shape that philosophic wonder first takes in a Catholic educated by a warmly believing household; and then of the place of audacious questioning in a Christian faith firmly held for love of God and in hope for God’s Kingdom.

Alexander Hamilton: Revolutionary Conservative Lawyer

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A new book illustrates how Alexander Hamilton used British legal traditions and the American judiciary to give a distinctive constitutional form to a new republic.

Can We Stop Fighting Over Schools?

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Most other nations with advanced levels of universal schooling provide public support to faith-based schools with no evident harm to their social fabric and with considerably less conflict over schooling. The time has come for the United States to adopt principled pluralism as the fundamental and equitable structure of our education system.

Orestes Brownson, Being Catholic, and Being American

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The writings of Orestes Brownson can help contemporary Catholics make sense of the American Founding.

The Libertarian Case for Drug Prohibition

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Freedom isn’t just the bare ability to do something; it is the ability to act under the influence of properly functioning cognitive faculties. If you value freedom, then you should oppose the legalization of recreational drugs.

Transgenderism: A State-Sponsored Religion?

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Gender dysphoria is a serious mental health issue. By contrast, transgenderism is a belief system that increasingly looks like a cultish religion—a modern day Gnosticism denying physical reality for deceived perceptions—being forced on the public by the state.

LOL: No Laughing Matter for Catholic Universities

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In order to be considered a university at all by those who fancy themselves the arbiters of what counts as knowledge, the Catholic university must abandon its fundamental truth claims and its proper relationship with those entrusted with the proclamation of that truth.

Swamp Thing: A Qualified Huzzah for the Party Establishment

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Even when its nomination process is broken enough to give us such a man as Donald Trump for our president, the party establishment has shown a remarkable capacity to fill the voids created by his inattention and to guide many of his most important policy decisions.

Christian Rights: Did Pro-Life Advocacy Turn Conservative Evangelicals into Human Rights Advocates?

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A new book is an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand conservative evangelicals on their own terms. It traces the ways in which pro-life politics has made the Christian Right of 2017 a very different entity from the Religious Right of the 1970s.

Grace Builds Upon and Doesn’t Destroy Nature: On First Things, Baptism, and the Natural Family

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We need not parrot old arguments, but we should avoid giving countenance to dangerous and unproductive ones. Being novel, contrarian, and clever is no substitute for the politics of prudence and the sober pursuit of truth.

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