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.

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The Supreme Court’s latest abortion decision is a significant setback for women and the unborn.
In an excellent new book, Mary Eberstadt argues that secular progressivism is not just a political ideology; it is a competing faith.
Arguments about the UK’s Brexit referendum were framed in terms of the UK’s global economic and political role. But the real issues for Brits were closer to home: whether they trusted their politicians to safeguard their national institutions and whether they believed that the European Union weakened these institutions.
Regardless of whether we are for or against current European Union (EU) policies, the EU fails even the most minimal test of what counts as a democracy. This discussion should be prior to whether we are in favor of or against migration, an EU army, or EU tax powers.
Until a solid conservative independent candidate has made a run for the presidency and is coming up far short the Monday before the election, there is no reason for a conservative (or anyone else) to consider Donald Trump as the answer to the Democratic candidate.
True religious freedom demands that we allow space in our society for difference, even when we don’t understand the reasons for a particular religious practice. Having to live without fully understanding others comes with the territory of genuine diversity.
For those feeling adrift amid the tumult of our politics, economy, and culture, Yuval Levin’s new book offers hope that some good can be found in the turmoil around us.
In our emerging legal climate, Christians are to be admired for their dedication to moral principle, and they are welcome to act in accordance with it at home and at church. But once they venture into public, our new legal overlords tell us, they must act according to a different set of norms.
There will be no true justice—and no real political discourse—until the Rawlsian illusion of neutrality is rejected and the Rawlsian tyranny strangling political discourse is overthrown. The second of two parts.
John Rawls’s philosophy of jurisprudence permeates America’s top universities and law schools. The acceptance of his principles foreordained the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage and will do the same in future cases involving euthanasia, transgender rights, and polygamy. Part one of two.
Despite arguments to the contrary, pro-lifers simply cannot support federal funding for Planned Parenthood. If the price for a seat at the public justice table is taxpayer funding for the nation’s leading abortion provider, it may be time to think about another table.
With Trump as nominee, social conservatives might think that by not voting for him they are keeping their hands clean. These people fail to recognize that under a Clinton regime there will be no refuge from a systematic agenda that seeks to destroy the very notion of “nature” and of any restraint on federal power.
A recent statement by the Attorney General provides a window into the intellectual history surrounding the concept of “human dignity” and the selfhood from which it arises.
Seeing in our contemporary politics the revival of Douglas Democracy in all its anxieties about freedom—and seeing it make such headway in Lincoln’s political party—is disheartening in the extreme. The imperative of learning from Lincoln, as Allen Guelzo’s work brings him to us, has never been stronger.
If you want to make America great again, you cannot afford to ignore the role stable marriage plays in motivating our labor force and in our nation’s economic growth as a whole.
The face that is emerging for the GOP is the ugly face we have always been accused of having—misogynistic, racist, and gratuitously authoritarian. If we assent to his nomination, how can we still consider ourselves the flag bearers of the attempt to harmonize virtue and the political life?
Christianity has never seen the pursuit of virtue as incompatible with private possession of wealth.
If the federal government, via the interpretive activity of one of its executive departments, can issue mandates to the states regarding bathrooms, it is hard to imagine an area of local governance shielded from federal scrutiny.
It’s time for another Morningside Heights Declaration.
If we want a just society, we must begin by recovering the right understanding of prudence. We must not commit the idealist’s error of making the best the enemy of the good.
Political institutions force individuals to cooperate, to listen to opposing points of view, and to think about the decisions they are about to make. They delay and complicate the way that consent is expressed, but this is precisely why they are necessary: they help ensure that the public will is reasonable.
If a slogan can mean anything to anyone, who could oppose it?
Vanderbilt is legally free to constitute itself as a non-religious university. The question is whether Gordon College will be left free to constitute itself as a Christian college. Will we have equal liberty, or only liberty for those who despise Christianity?
The students of Justice Scalia were not merely those who took his classes or served as his clerks. Through his opinions, he taught countless others the importance of the rule of law, republican self-government, and the virtue of courageous persistence in a good cause.

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