Free trade brings with it financial benefits and human rewards. However, it sometimes must be limited if communities and people are to flourish.
Pillar: Sexuality & Family
Sexuality & Family
The second pillar of a decent society is the institution of the family, which is built upon the comprehensive sexual union of man and woman. No other institution can top the family’s ability to transmit what is pivotal—character formation, values, virtues, and enduring love—to each new generation.
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Free Trade as Prosperity, Free Trade as Human Right
Free trade is not only good economic policy, it is a human right that should not be restricted lightly.
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Same-Sex Marriage and the Civil-Rights Movement: A Problematic Analogy
Those who see the movement for same-sex marriage as today’s civil-rights struggle are abusing historical reason and our national institutions.
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Infidelity and Its Implications
As recent polls and recent events show, Americans remain morally opposed to sexual infidelity in marriage. At the same time, Americans show broad acceptance of premarital sex. But an examination of the reasons why infidelity within marriage is detrimental to human flourishing reveals sexual infidelity prior to marriage to be just as harmful.
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Making Men Moral
Earlier this year scholars gathered at Union University for a conference considering the work of Robert P. George in his 1994 book Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality. One theme of the conference was how religion and reason can help us understand and promote the common good.
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Robert P. George on the Struggle Over Marriage
Recently, the editor of Public Discourse sat down with Robert P. George to discuss the state of the marriage debate. While supporters of same-sex “marriage” claim that history is on their side, it turns out that supporters of traditional marriage have more reasons for hope than they may realize.
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Why We Should Oppose Same-Sex Marriage
Same-sex marriage fundamentally alters the idea of marriage, expands government control of marriage, and ignores a child’s right to a mother and father.
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Natural Law and Economics: Total Strangers or Separated Lovers?
A recent conference at Princeton University asked whether in the midst of current economic challenges natural law philosophy might not provide a better foundation for the practice of economics than the utilitarian account of value that currently underwrites it.
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The Right and Wrong Responses to “Sexting”
A proposed law in Vermont will not only do little to solve the problem of “sexting,” but actually risks resulting in making even more children vulnerable to sexual exploitation.
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The Same-Sex Marriage Movement and the Dangers of Denunciation
Regardless of who prevails in the argument over marriage, the politics of denunciation practiced by same-sex marriage supporters will have damaged the public discourse.
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Torture: What it is, and Why it is Wrong
The recent publication of the Torture Memos and of the International Red Cross report on the treatment of high-level detainees in the aftermath of 9/11 has returned to national prominence the discussion of the morality of torture and “enhanced interrogation” techniques. It is important to be clear, as a moral matter, on what boundaries should be accepted in interrogation of human beings; a responsible and non-politicized discussion is essential on this difficult issue.
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The Institution Formerly Known As Marriage
The Iowa court’s recent decision does not simply broaden marriage, it radically changes its nature. While marriage previously served public purposes of attaching mothers and fathers to their children and one another, now marriage merely serves as affirmation of adult feelings.
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Law, Feelings, and Religion at the Bar in Iowa
The Supreme Court of Iowa’s decision to redefine marriage abandons reason and replaces it with feelings as the standard of public consensus.
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Should the Obama Conscience Rules Seek to Protect Persons or Provide Benefits?
The state is required to protect persons not just from physical harm but from being forced to violate their limited but definite freedom of conscience.
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Confronting the Hook-Up Culture
A new approach is needed to support students in the hostile hook-up culture on college campuses.
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Privatizing Marriage is not the Answer to the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
Far from settling the marriage debate, ‘getting the state out of marriage’ will reduce liberty, leave cultural questions simmering, and harm our nation’s children.
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A Real Compromise on the Same-Sex Marriage Debate: An Invitation to Rauch and Blankenhorn
A recent compromise on the same-sex ‘marriage’ debate granted too much to revisionists and too little to traditionalists. A better compromise will respect the societal importance of marriage while also providing for the real needs of domestic partners.
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What Obama Will Give the Left
With political realities preventing Obama from satisfying his left-wing base on economic and foreign policy questions, look for Obama to give the left the barn on social issues. And expect him to do so in significant measure through the courts.
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David Ogden and the New Pornographers: Why the Senate Should Reject His Nomination
David Ogden has impressive legal credentials, but his long career as a pornography-industry attorney casts doubt on his ability to enforce laws meant to protect children.
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Collegiate Sex-Ed
Every fall, kids arrive on college campuses and learn that their basic moral intuitions on sexual matters don’t square with the reigning ideas. Thanks to debased campus culture and overreaching on the part of administrators and professors, students are beginning to respond systematically—and they’re having an impact. Here’s how.
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Risky Business: Keynes, Moral Hazard, and the Economic Crisis
If governments do not take moral hazard seriously, their response to the present recession may sow the seeds of a future economic crisis.
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An Absolute Liberty of Conscience?
Freedom of conscience is an important, though limited, right. In some cases a state may prevent someone from acting on her conscientious judgments. But in other cases—such as those in which a pro-life doctor is required to perform an abortion—the violation of conscience is intrinsically unjust.
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Why Marriage is Inherently Heterosexual
A recent story in Newsweek claimed that the only reasons for opposing same-sex “marriage” are religious. But there are powerful arguments for marriage rooted not in faith but in reason.
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No More Bretton Woods
While this weekend's conference threatens to repeat the failures of Bretton Woods, the work of economist Wilhelm Röpke may recommend a more successful approach.
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Marriage Matters: For Kids, for Parents, and for Religious Liberty
Marriage between a man and a woman is rooted in our nature--"in biology, not bigotry"--sex between men and women makes babies, society needs babies, and babies need a father as well as a mother. But the proponents of same-sex marriage want the government to declare in law that there is no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex unions, and anyone who thinks otherwise is promoting bigotry. This will have major ramifications for those who believe in marriage in the traditional sense--especially religious citizens and organizations.