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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 Dynamics of Exemption and Establishment 

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Public Discourse

Should Libertarians Be Conservatives?: The Tough Cases of Abortion and Marriage

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The libertarian commitment to free markets and limited government is best preserved within a broader conservative context.
Public Discourse

Libertarianism, Conservatism, and Egalitarianism

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Libertarians and conservatives should not allow their differences to impede political cooperation against the common adversary: egalitarian liberalism.
Public Discourse

The Unprecedented, Extraordinary, Anti-democratic, Activist Power of Judicial Review

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President Obama’s recent quips about “judicial activism” do not amount to arguments. They are shallow sloganeering.
Public Discourse

Rediscovering Property

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Has the Supreme Court rediscovered the institution of property? In a recent unanimous affirmation of property owners’ rights, the Court gives us reason to hope.
Public Discourse

The Occupy Movement’s Vacuous Critique of Inequality

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The Occupy Movement should be an occasion for the American left to rethink its own moral crusades, which turn out to be morally corrosive and hence incompatible with any serious commitment to social justice.
Public Discourse

Libertarianism: Not So Wrong, After All! A Reply to Nathan Schlueter

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Libertarianism offers the best defense of individual rights that government can employ.
Public Discourse

The Libertarian Double-Face and the Case for Conservatism: A Reply to Wenzel

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Conservatives value individual liberty as much as libertarians, but they deny that freedom from coercion is the only form of liberty.
Public Discourse

Pepsi, Proxies, and Pro-Life Respect for the Rule of (Corporate) Law

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Social activists opposed to the use of HEK-293—a kidney cell line derived from an aborted baby—in PepsiCo products should not respond with shareholder activism, because it wreaks political and economic havoc.
Public Discourse

Confusion About Discrimination

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Not all discrimination is wrong. While the government should regulate some forms of wrongful discrimination, other forms of discrimination lie beyond the purview of the state.
Public Discourse

Privatizing Marriage Is Unjust to Children

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The primary business of the state is justice. Because children cannot be autonomous, adult society has an obligation in justice to provide institutional structures that protect their most basic interests.
Public Discourse

Privatizing Marriage Will Expand the Role of the State

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Libertarians are being taken in by rhetoric that sounds libertarian but, in fact, will lead to a dramatic shift in the balance of power between the state and civil society, indeed between the state and the natural order itself.
Public Discourse

Privatizing Marriage Is Impossible

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We cannot escape the fact that marriage is an intrinsically public institution. We can’t avoid making collective decisions about its meaning and purpose. If we don’t do it explicitly, we will end up doing it implicitly.
Public Discourse

A Guiding Principle Revealed

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The state should never force anyone to perform an action he or she believes to be wrong, unless it has a good reason, not merely to have the action performed, but to insist that even those who find it wrong perform it.
Public Discourse

Conservatism or Liberty?

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Conservatism is misguided, arbitrary, inconsistent, and ultimately inimical to liberty and human flourishing. Libertarianism allows for human flourishing and harmony from respect and cooperation.
Public Discourse

Why I am Not a Libertarian

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Libertarianism and conservatism are often lumped together, but there are fundamental differences between the two philosophies that make them incompatible.
Public Discourse

Why America Needs Social Conservatism

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An America without social conservatism would be stripped of its conservative enlightenment roots and go the way of Europe via entitlements and centralized economic regulation.
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.

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