For the conservative theorists of the poison pill, everything becomes about ideas. According to them, Ockham, Scotus, Bacon, Descartes, Locke—they are the important bad guys who determined the decadence of our time and the problems we should be talking about. But ideas don’t work this way; reality d| Public Discourse
The most important benefits the Christian religion can give to democracy is the awakening of conscience, the substance of ethics, and the rehumanization of society. It gives human freedom guidance, and the human spirit of toleration and forbearance. And it is the Christian religion that teaches a true equality—that of human dignity, on which an imperfect yet a more just society can be built.| Public Discourse
In a traditional society people are bound, as if by a chain, but democracy breaks the chain, delinking all from all. The tight bonds in traditional societies attach and oblige men to a variety of people and institutions outside of themselves, turning them outward toward others and toward the society around them.| Public Discourse
Christians need to realize that there is no scapegoat on this earth that can be sacrificed to bring us a peaceful end to the evils we encounter.| Public Discourse
Teachers are doing the best that they can. At the same time, I want to be clear that the conflict thesis is about as out of step with our current historical knowledge as scientific creationism is with contemporary biology. Continuing to teach its myths as fact is educational malpractice.| Public Discourse
Some today think religion and politics should be more intertwined. Alexis de Tocqueville would have thought just the opposite.| Public Discourse
Whether Beethoven ought to be understood as a Catholic composer is no longer the difficult question, but how and when he is Catholic in his music will, I suspect, frame many discussions to come.| Public Discourse
McConnell will be the deciding vote for fifteen more months. That’s the countdown for a retirement-eligible judge who wants to be replaced by a conservative.| Public Discourse
Whether state and federal governments will support school choice remains to be seen; there seems to be considerable political pressure in both directions. But on the social level, while we may continue to criticize each other’s school choices, increasing numbers of families seem unwilling to bypass choice.| Public Discourse
President Trump plays extreme hardball by American standards, some of it blatantly authoritarian. Conservatives lose credibility when they deny this. But Trump’s election and reelection were, in part, a reaction to decades of undemocratic progressive change in the courts, bureaucracy, and public education—itself a kind of hardball. Liberals who deny or downplay these phenomena only feed populist anger.| Public Discourse
Social conservatives have long recognized the civilizational value of the quotidian work of parenthood. In an analogous way, we ought to recognize that it is in the small acts of local participation that societies thrive or languish.| Public Discourse
Every age has its distractions, and its temptations for a shortcut. But if we are to understand ourselves and our predicament, we have the same resources our predecessors had. We have books to read. We will grow or shrink as human beings according to our willingness to read them.| Public Discourse
While Trump’s ham-fisted assault on higher ed was justified, that doesn’t mean his tactics are—or that this will end well.| Public Discourse
America has long led the world in economic success, entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation. We can and we should lead in human flourishing. To do so, we must invest in the fundamental ingredients of flourishing: marriage and children.| Public Discourse
Yes, patriotism can be as simple as flying the flag or even reciting the Declaration of Independence on Fourth of July. But perhaps the greatest act of patriotism is something we can do every day: start to initiate or rekindle friendships with people with whom we disagree.| Public Discourse
We are very different people from those who came before us, because of our deficits in social learning.| Public Discourse
If my younger self had understood even this much—that discernment begins with recognizing one’s gifts and offering them, detached from any personal agenda, for God’s purposes—I might have spent a little less time anxiously waiting for the clouds to part. I might have spent more time offering the little I had, trusting that God could use it for his purposes.| Public Discourse
Welcoming children surely is a great responsibility; no one can know ahead of time the challenges and joys that are waiting for them. But perhaps the greatest surprise is that every decision and every parenting strategy will find its true home in realities that, blessedly, far exceed them.| Public Discourse
Individuals who want to marry must choose from options that lack the spontaneity and spark many hope for: singles groups, dating apps, speed dating. One is left wondering whether a bad script is preferable to no script at all. And well-intentioned people—mostly married—offer all kinds of conflicting advice about how to date to find a spouse. I aim to tackle these seeming contradictions in order to show how each can be true and helpful for the Tough Mudder that is twenty-first-century dating.| Public Discourse
We make friends with particular people in particular circumstances, and for this reason we should not allow ourselves to be distracted by what is remote and abstract. We should delight in and give thanks for those we can know, love, and enjoy in reality.| Public Discourse
Our duties of care to others place limitations and constraints on our choice of career. But these constraints are, in fact, the path to real freedom.| Public Discourse
Justice Sotomayor’s analysis depends on many assumptions that she does not articulate or defend. This lack of clarity leads to unnecessary confusion and inconsistency. In more ways than one, Justice Sotomayor is changing the subject.| Public Discourse
The aftershocks of the sexual revolution continue to play out not only on the legal and political planes but in churches, schools, and charities. For American Protestants in particular, debates about what counts as authority and what faithfulness means for human sexuality are as unavoidable as they are important.| Public Discourse
We must rely on natural law, even as we confess that it cannot bear the full weight of moral resolution. Why? The natural law is not enough, yet the natural law is all we have as denizens of a fractured age.| Public Discourse
“Reason and revelation,” “God’s creation and the natural order of things,” “the biological nature of human beings,” and “Natural Law”: these are Mahoney’s lodestars and the criteria by which he judges not just ideology’s falsehood but its destructive evil.| Public Discourse
MacIntyre urges a recovery of the Aristotelian tradition to show modernity the way out of its aporia on moral questions: the fact that “there is in our society no established way of deciding between” the rival moral first principles we’ve lost our comprehension of and are polarized over.| Public Discourse
View More Articles eBook Catch up on PD Access our 15th anniversary eBook! Download the eBook today Download Keep up with the conversation! Subscribe to Public Discourse today. Subscribe Intervi| Public Discourse
This Friday, the Court will decide whether to review a case about an Indiana law that prohibits abortions performed solely because the unborn child has Down Syndrome or another disability. Regardless of our nation’s polarized views on the policy and politics of abortion, it is clear that our Constit| Public Discourse
