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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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Parthenon

Social Contract Theory in the Ruins?

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Is government by consent irretrievably lost? I maintain that the principle of consent is not lost and that we can rebuild a different sort of social contract theory from amid the ruins.
Israel Palestine

What Is Settler Colonialism? A Q&A with Adam Kirsch

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The only way to actually create a better future is to start with the world we actually live in and move forward—which may require “despairing” of the past, which cannot be changed.
Constitution

Give Me That Old Time Originalism

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Originalism in Theology and Law is a welcome salvo in an ecumenical and interdisciplinary conversation that has been too long dominated by originalism’s critics.
Capital punishment

Wrongful Executions and the Pro-Life Movement’s Responsibility 

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While serious people can debate the underlying ethics of whether the death penalty is just, our country has proven that it is unable to carry out executions in a way that protects justice.
Capitol building

The Patience of Conservatism

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This election will come and go, and the results will be, as usual, a mixed bag. There are better and worse alternatives, of course, and I have my own judgments and evaluations about such things, as does everyone else. Rather, I’m thinking about a mood too prevalent among conservatives in our time, one where gratitude, patience, caution, and fidelity have given way to anger, panic, urgency, and bile. Such are not conservative, nor are they good for us or our opponents, and they are likely to make things far, far worse. 
ethics advice column

Ask Chris Tollefsen: An Ethics Advice Column

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For one thinking clearly about the issue, the incrementalist approach is not only permissible, but obligatory, a matter of justice to those unborn human beings who can, but otherwise will not, be saved.
Israel flag

What Conservatives, Catholics, and All Americans Can Learn from Israel 

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As the experience of many nations around the world shows, constitutions are easily dissolved, and constitutional order lost, when citizens allow their leaders to violate their charter to achieve partisan goals. When that happens, the delicate system of checks and balances usually gives way to an oppressive one-party rule. 
Charles Maurras

The Anti-Transcendent Politics of Charles Maurras

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Many of the causes championed by the New Right are worthy ones. But a prudential calculation made in good faith, and which refuses to compromise on principle, is something quite different from the enthusiastic advocacy of positions that contradict principle entirely or the embrace of ideologies that are fundamentally anti-religious.
Ukraine war

Just War and Just Peace: A Response to Carson Holloway

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Love your neighbor as yourself—contra Holloway, the “Golden Rule” ethic makes for morally serious, honorable, and practical foreign policy considerations. What it needs, however, is an actor or agent—a willing agent—who has the moral backbone to respond. As with individuals, so it is with nations: to whom much has been given, much will be required.
The Vatican

Across the Divide: M. Ciftci and Nathaniel Peters on Vatican II, Church–State Relations, and Political Participation 

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Christians should always make the best of any pragmatic agreements they can find with non-Christians on any issue. But the evangelical reasons why we support, for instance, constitutional government should be made clear, not veiled in embarrassment by translating them into the idiom of natural law or human dignity out of a misguided concern to avoid blurring the boundaries between political and religious affairs.
The Good Samaritan

Ukraine and the Morality of Foreign Policy

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I agree with Professor Charles that a decent and just approach to politics must be informed by this elementary moral rule, even in the realm of international relations. At the same time, it is also important to note that the application of the parable to a problem like the Ukraine war is not as simple as Charles’s account suggests.  
the US Constitution

The Constitution and Its Critics

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Rana’s history prompts us to reflect on how we ought to conceive of American identity and defend the Constitution’s anti-majoritarian checks and balances in the twenty-first century.
Soviet flag

Does America Need a Sharansky?

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Unfortunately, Morson looks only at a handful of symptoms that are vaguely comparable to the pathologies of late Soviet society and concludes that the same disease is at work. He does not address the deep causes of Soviet and Russian dysfunction, all of which are absent in the United States—authoritarianism, a command economy, censorship, oppression, terror, the Gulag. 
War in Ukraine

Who Is My Neighbor? Ukraine, Just War, and the “Good Samaritan” Ethic

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It is time—indeed, past time—to act decisively. Ukraine is our neighbor. Will Russia, with her imperial designs and commitment to do the unthinkable, be deterred? Are we in the West willing to confront sociopolitical evil? And do so in the name of justice, charity, and human dignity?
pro-life movement

Make the Pro-Life Movement Great Again 

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There are fewer than one hundred days remaining in the 2024 election season. We have precious little time to refocus and recommit, and to learn from the losing campaigns to help inform our efforts going forward.
all gender restroom

Load-Bearing Walls: How Denying Biological Reality Harms Us All

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Man-made positive laws should follow the laws of nature. Americans cannot bear the load of the government’s latest attempt to defy reality. And the courts should ensure that we won’t have to.
voting booth

The Bookshelf: They’re Our Parties and I’ll Cry If I Want To

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And so here we are, with hyper-partisanship and extremely weak parties, largely because earlier generations of “reformers” wanted to make them more “responsible” (read “ideological”) and more “democratic” (read “responsive to a narrow base”). It’s past time to have a conversation about reforming the reforms. More creative thinking about how to make parties again represent the great middle of the country would be most welcome.
social security

The Social Injustice of Social Security

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Unraveling a program that is deeply embedded in our politics and culture won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be attempted. The goal of relieving old-age financial hardship was a worthy one, but the policy measure enacted was a defective means to achieve it. The insolvency of Social Security may provide the emergency necessary to bring about change, if only we do not let the crisis go to waste.
dating apps

What Bumble’s Bumble Tells Us about Dating Apps

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Potential partners deserve to be encountered with dignity as whole people, not as reproductive data points with scores that may be higher or lower based on our checklists. True love, the kind that’s truly human, cannot be “added to cart.” 
Venezuelan flag

What’s Next for Venezuela? A Q&A with Angel Alvarado

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At this moment, what we can do is the right thing. And sometimes the right thing is very risky—going out into the streets and demonstrating your opinions on the situation. It's risky, but I think it’s our right, and I think it’s what is right.
gender dysphoria

The Michigan Conversion Therapy Ban Violates Human Nature and Religious Freedom

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The meaning of “conversion therapy” that Michigan law now bans does not simply place some technical limit on those who work in the mental health profession. It instead validates and mandates a harmful conception of human nature and identity that is antithetical to the convictions of countless religious professionals who faithfully serve in this space.
Republican Party

Social Conservatives, Populism, and Confused Republicans

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Social conservatives serve a noble cause, and any populism ignoring their concerns is a populism not worth supporting.
Supreme Court in Finland

Tried for a Tweet

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What I’ve learned in the five years the Finnish state prosecuted me for my faith
Republican party

Pro-Life Peril and Hope

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The GOP has always been an imperfect and unreliable vehicle for pro-life policy, and Trump’s approach will make matters much worse. Pro-lifers must be clear-eyed about the danger our movement is in, wise and unwearied in our political response, and hopeful despite the darkness of our culture.

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