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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.

On the Republic and Its Soul  

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Public Discourse

The Unreasonableness of Secular Public Reason

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When voters and legislators act on religiously informed moral convictions in making the law, it may entail a blending of religion and politics that is disquieting to the secular liberal mind, but it closes no gap in the “separation of church and state.”
Public Discourse

Slaying the Hydra: Can Virtue Heal the American Right?

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The modern administrative state and our militant secular culture are like two heads of a single hydra. To destroy the beast, we must deal with the monster in its totality.
Public Discourse

Complementarity: Lessons from the Adams Family

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As the history of the Adams family attests, the proper education of the young American requires both father and mother, grandfathers and grandmothers.
Public Discourse

What’s Conservative about Radical Traditionalism?

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There are deep flaws in the narrative of decline that blames the Founders’ natural-law liberalism for today’s cultural and political decay.
Public Discourse

Why the “Catholic” “Pro-Life” Case for the Bomb Fails

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No one who claims to be pro-life can say that women, children, the elderly, and indeed, the unborn of a nation may be legitimately targeted with death for the sake of the consequences, however beneficial.
Public Discourse

The Constitutional Powers of War and Peace

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228 years ago today, the Framers at the Constitutional Convention decided the power to declare war would be reserved to Congress, and the power to conduct war and make peace would be reserved to the president. Presidents and congresses have not always followed the Constitution in matters of war, but that doesn’t mean the Constitution has changed.
Public Discourse

Conservatives, Check Your Privilege

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The idea that some groups are objectively disadvantaged in our society should not be dismissed by conservatives. After all, we believe that we are all embedded in a tapestry of traditions that inform our personal and communal identities.
Public Discourse

The Stakes of Free Exercise

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The Free Exercise Clause creates a unique type of constitutional liberty—a substantive freedom that limits the extent to which government can interfere with religious freedom.
Public Discourse

A Call for a Unified Party

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The recent Obergefell decision should serve as a wake-up call to conservatives. In particular, conservatives should rethink the Republican Party platform and work to refocus the GOP around the broad theme of “nature.”
Public Discourse

Conservatism, Free Markets, and America’s Post-Obama Economy

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Instead of settling for damage control, now is the time for conservatives to outline a far-reaching pro-market economic reform agenda. Not only should conservatives explain how America’s economy can be changed in ways that promote lasting growth and wider prosperity, but they should also speak in moral terms, presenting a convincing normative alternative to progressivism’s social democratic vision.
Public Discourse

The Equality Act: Bad Policy that Poses Great Harms

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If passed, the Equality Act would empower the government to discriminate against those who do not accept a sexually permissive understanding of human nature that denies sexual complementarity.
Public Discourse

Justice Kennedy and the Lonely Promethean Man of Liberalism

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Justice Kennedy’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision is anchored in the liberty to “define and express” one’s identity. But this view of man is not as exalted as it seems. According to Kennedy, self-defined man, if he’s unmarried, remains tragically lonely, and without state recognition, might even doubt his own dignity.
Public Discourse

The Case of the Pro-Life Movement: On Demography and Marriage

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The future of marriage in the United States may look grim, but so did the pro-life cause look forty years ago. Embattled social conservatives should find hope in the demographic shifts that trailed the legalization of abortion.
Public Discourse

The Unsoundness of Judicial Supremacy

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Decisions of the Supreme Court that go beyond power delegated to the judicial branch or are contrary to the Constitution are null and void. To protect our constitutional republic, citizens, states, and the other branches of the federal government must resist any such decision.
Public Discourse

Religion and the Republic

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A true republic respects religious speech. Such speech represents a different authority from governing power and affirms its limited nature.
Public Discourse

Marriage and the Constitution: What the Court Said and Why It Got It Wrong

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The Supreme Court’s ruling is a significant setback for all Americans who believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, democratic self-government, and marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Will the right of Americans to speak and act in accord with the truth of marriage be tolerated?
Public Discourse

Thanks for Everything, Justice Kennedy

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As a legal opinion, Obergefell is an utter failure, relying as it does on a tenuous and historically ungrounded jurisprudence of “dignity.” The debate over same-sex marriage is not over. A constitutional ruling so shoddily reasoned, so completely and easily dismantled by the dissents, must paper over a cause that cannot ultimately win in an open debate.
Public Discourse

The Practical Wisdom of Chief Justice Ellsworth: Reconsidering the Separation of Church and State

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If good morals are essential for a free republic to endure, and if a certain group of institutions successfully promote those morals, then it follows that a well-governed state may be friendly to those institutions—even if they are churches.
Public Discourse

Lessons from a Life of Hope: Learning from Father Richard John Neuhaus

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Those who would follow in Father Richard John Neuhaus’s footsteps would do well to note these lessons of his life. Religion and vocation matter more deeply than political wrangling, and we must continue to build intellectual families that combine conviviality with fighting for the greatest causes.
Public Discourse

Democracy Isn’t the Problem: The Benedict Option Meets the Buckley Option

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The “Benedict Option” isn’t the only way for Christians to confront the reality of an increasingly hostile and secular culture.
Public Discourse

Riches, Religion, and the New Atheism

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It’s not that in misery and suffering human beings grasp at foolish theories that give them some hope. Rather, amidst prosperity, human beings can blind themselves to the reality of the human condition and so never ask the questions that, once asked, cannot be plausibly answered except in theistic terms.
Public Discourse

Professor Paulsen and Justice Scalia: A Qualified Defense of the Smith Decision

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There are some problems in the reasoning of Justice Scalia’s opinion in the 1990 religious freedom case. But in its holding, and in its rejection of a quarter century of jurisprudence that could not be squared with the First Amendment, the judgment was correct.
Public Discourse

There Is a Fundamental Right to Marriage, and We Must Preserve It

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Whether or not Locke would approve of it, there is a fundamental marriage right. It is ancient, not recent, and it secures the integrity of the natural family. In fact, nothing is more fundamental to our legal edifice than the ancient liberty of the natural family.
Public Discourse

The Value of Children: Economics, Faith, and the Problem of Underpopulation

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The overpopulation crisis predicted by Malthusians has failed to materialize. Instead, developed nations face serious underpopulation. To solve this problem, we must rediscover the importance of children.

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