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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.

Public Discourse at 15: Resisting Evil without Losing Our Souls

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Public Discourse

The Zero Sum Games

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The totalitarians of this age are not petty thugs. They are intellectuals with a vision, and they will see their vision enacted, no matter who they have to run over, because they are certain it is good for you.
Public Discourse

James Q. Wilson: Another View

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Wilson’s scholarly achievement was great, but his moral legacy is greater.
Public Discourse

Originalism and Judicial Restraint

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Originalism must guard against an overconfident reliance on history. Restraint and judicial caution are needed in an age of judicial overreaching.
Public Discourse

Vanderbilt’s Right to Despise Christianity

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Vanderbilt University has decided that campus student religious groups may not require that their leaders accept the core beliefs of the religious group they would lead. Ironically, Vanderbilt’s right to do so rests on the same freedom it denies to these groups—a group’s freedom to define what it stands for and the views it expresses.
Public Discourse

Grave Evil and Political Responsibility

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Morally responsible, prudent voting seeks to defend the common good to the extent realistically possible, even if that means only preventing further damage to an already highly degraded culture.
Public Discourse

Just War and the Iran Crisis

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It would be wrong for the United States to engage at this time in an attack on Iran or to participate substantially in an Israeli action.
Public Discourse

Marriage Decisions and the Importance of Judicial Reason

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Recent attacks on marriage threaten not only a foundational public institution but the rule of law itself and the legitimacy of the judicial branch.
Public Discourse

The Bishops and the Mandate: Principled Witness vs. Politics as Usual

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The controversy over the HHS mandate is not a spat about wonkish detail or tribal privilege. It remains a struggle for the principle of religious freedom, the soul of civil society.
Public Discourse

Marriage Unmoored

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Many expect that the Supreme Court will soon overturn the traditional marriage laws remaining on the books in forty-three states, a prospect that would have been unthinkable only a decade or two ago. What happened?
Public Discourse

Equality versus Freedom?

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Lawmakers must look past the “equality versus religious freedom” standoff, and consider the substantive merits of each particular case.
Public Discourse

The HHS Mandate, Cooperation with Evil, and Coercion

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The fundamental problem with the mandate is that it coerces some people into doing what they think is wrong, and this problem remains regardless of whether the coercion excuses the actions of the people being coerced.
Public Discourse

Obama’s Contraception Cram-down: The Pork Precedent

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An ancient example of resistance to a tyrant’s attempt to coerce violations of religious conscience provides an interesting perspective on resistance to the Obama administration’s recent healthcare coverage mandate.
Public Discourse

Mandates and Bad Law

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Were the central task of government to be seen as that of aiding citizens in their own self-constitution, oriented towards real human goods including the good of religion, the HHS mandate would be seen for the unjust imposition it is.
Public Discourse

The Paradise of Sexual Revolution

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The sexual revolution puts forth a vision of paradise in which we rig up some nifty devices to guarantee infertility, consider neither holiness nor virtue, and believe in the blessings of no one and nowhere and nothing.
Public Discourse

Justice Kennedy, Abortion, and Same-Sex Marriage

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If marriage is to be preserved in the present struggle, our task is to sort through the influential kinds of arguments about same-sex marriage and abortion that have been introduced by Justice Kennedy.
Public Discourse

The HHS Mandate and Legal Precedent

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Contrary to what Obama supporters would have us believe, there’s no precedent for the HHS mandate.
Public Discourse

Morals and Mandates

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Morality is not about keeping as long a leash as you can on the harms you cause. It is about keeping upright intentions and rejecting unfair tradeoffs—neither of which Obama’s proposed revision even pretends to affect.
Public Discourse

President Obama, the Right Not to Do Wrong, and the Politics of Ruse and Delay

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No one can be rightly coerced by the state to be directly complicit in the commission of a wrong. This goes for any businessman, employer, insurance company, or individual, regardless of faith.
Public Discourse

The Ninth Circuit’s Desperate Targeting of Justice Kennedy

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This week’s decision in the Prop 8 case is a desperate appeal to Justice Kennedy, and the latest assault of judicial supremacy.
Public Discourse

Coming Apart, and Back Together?

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Charles Murray argues we’ve come apart, but can therapeutic Deism and the sexual revolution put us back together?
Public Discourse

A Muslim View on Respecting Life

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Life’s fragility should remind us of the greatness of God, and the goodness of God’s creation should inspire us to respect life. Adapted from remarks made in the Princeton University Chapel for Respect Life Sunday.
Public Discourse

Personally Opposed, but Sleeping with the Enemy

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Personally opposed, but actively supporting…well, it’s complicated.
Public Discourse

Conservative Poverty Fighting

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Neither liberal nor libertarian, a principled conservative way of helping the poor.
Public Discourse

Tax Romney, not Corporations

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It’s time to end the corporate income tax: it strains job-creating businesses, punishes workers rather than capital owners, encourages wealthy companies to find loopholes in the tax system, and allows some of the richest among us to pay strangely low personal income tax rates.
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