[{"id":101856,"date":"2026-09-10T20:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T00:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101856"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:02:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:02:40","slug":"homer-against-the-attention-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101856\/","title":{"rendered":"Homer Against the Attention Economy \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every design choice in the modern attention economy (the infinite scroll, push notifications, the autoplay feature on streaming services) rests on a single premise: repetition is friction, and friction is the enemy. Novelty keeps us moving, while familiarity makes continuing a certain course of action feel effortless. What matters is not whether the next thing is new or familiar, but that there <\/span>is <\/span><\/i>always a next thing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The internet makes the mechanism obvious, but the same logic now governs almost everything that competes for attention. Books open with increasingly graphic or high-stakes scenes. Films, series, and video games escalate spectacle and extremity. Art itself often chases shock as the default register. But escalation has a ceiling: the shock that works today has to get louder tomorrow just to register at all, and a culture running on that treadmill spends more and more energy to feel less and less impact.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet familiarity has its place. Repetition is cognitive infrastructure: the scaffolding that lets memory form, identity cohere, and culture survive transmission from one mind to another. Many <\/span>people<\/span><\/a> report<\/span><\/a> a subjective decline in sustained focus that follows the rise of the smartphone. Viral statistics about goldfish and shrinking attention spans deserve skepticism, yet the underlying concern is real.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Written culture has learned to treat repetition itself as a flaw: redundant padding to be cut or a sign of insufficient originality. Translators of Homer\u2019s ancient Greek have wrestled with this same tension for a century, and they haven\u2019t agreed on an answer. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Repetition in Translation<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Peter Green\u2019s <\/span>translation of the Odyssey<\/span><\/a> keeps Homer\u2019s repeated epithets and formulaic phrases fully intact. Achilles remains \u201cswift-footed\u201d whether he is fighting or sitting in his tent. Green\u2019s English is plain and meant to be read aloud; he preserves the repeated epithets and formulaic phrases precisely because the repetition itself is part of the point. Read Green and you will hear \u201cwine-dark sea\u201d and \u201crosy-fingered dawn\u201d exactly as Homer repeated them.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Fagles took the opposite approach. Uncomfortable with straight repetition, he worked to make the epithets contribute to the drama of each moment. Where Homer has Hector carry his \u201cshining helmet\u201d unchanged from line to line, Fagles makes the helmet flash repeatedly, until the device starts to feel more like a cinematic lighting effect than a Homeric formula. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, Emily Wilson made the choice consciously rather than instinctively. She <\/span>explained<\/span><\/a> to the <\/span>Chicago Review of Books<\/span><\/i> that repetition means something different depending on who is listening: in Homer\u2019s oral culture, repetition signaled that something is important and worth listening to and remembering. Back in 2017 she shared in that same interview her belief that in a literate culture like ours, the same repetition reads instead as unimportant, something to skip. She therefore chose to preserve the feeling of Homer\u2019s repetition through variation, rather than reproduce the exact words. Dawn still appears as often as she does in the Greek, and each appearance keeps the recurring imagery of roses, flowers, pinkness, fingers, and newness, but the phrasing changes from occurrence to occurrence.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wilson has since reconsidered that decision. After finishing her <\/span>Iliad <\/span><\/i>and living longer with the Homeric material, she returned to the <\/span>Odyssey <\/span><\/i>and began an entirely new translation. In a March 2026 talk at the University of Iowa titled \u201cRealms of Gold: Re-translating Homer in the Twenty-First Century,\u201d and in subsequent interviews, she has said that her experience has changed her understanding of repetition: she now sees more clearly how repeated phrases create patterns across the poem and help readers recognize connections between scenes. She is allowing herself more lines and syllables than in the first version precisely so that more of those repetitive elements can remain. The fact that she is willing to redo one of the most successful and widely read translations of the last decade because of this shift is rare and revealing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three serious translators, three different verdicts on the same literary challenge\u2014yet notice what they agree on even while disagreeing: none of them treats Homeric repetition as an accident. Green preserves it for the ear. Fagles varied it enough to disguise it. Wilson first tried to translate its function rather than its words, and is now testing whether a literate audience can tolerate more of the original texture than she once believed. The debate is not over whether repetition matters. It is over what to do with a technology built for the ear once it has been transplanted into a medium built for the eye.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Homer\u2019s Memory Technology<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Green\u2019s instinct is closer to mine: repetition wasn\u2019t merely an effect Homer was after; it was the mechanism itself. Poets today still use Homer\u2019s phonetic, poetic, and literary devices; when a poet repeats a sentence, it is because he wants readers to remember it. Similarly, when a writer uses a recurring motif or catchphrase, he is trying to engage the reader\u2019s attention and memory.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The techniques Homer\u2019s poets used were only later called \u201cmnemonics.\u201d But the devices baked into the poems look identical to the ones in a student\u2019s flashcard deck. Human memory hasn\u2019t changed; only our patience with it has.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the main methods Homer used is known today among linguists as chunking. A phrase like \u201cswift-footed Achilles\u201d isn\u2019t two words to the singer\u2019s mind; it is one. The name and the epithet have fused into a single retrievable unit, so what would otherwise be separate pieces of information\u2014a hero, a quality\u2014a specific meter collapses into a single mental “click.” This is exactly what language learners are doing when they group a phone number into three chunks instead of ten digits or bundle a set of vocabulary under one theme instead of memorizing each word in isolation. The formula is chunking with three thousand years of use behind it: proof that the mind has always preferred to carry fewer, denser units rather than many loose ones.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Take the epithet. “Resourceful Odysseus,” “grey-eyed Athena,” “wine-dark sea.” These aren\u2019t merely decorative. They\u2019re the keyword method, running in reverse: instead of linking a foreign word to a familiar one, the poet links a familiar name to a fixed sound-pattern, so the singer’s mouth can produce the phrase before the mind has finished composing the next line. This is exactly what happens when a French learner pictures a giant <\/span>pomme<\/span><\/i> (apple) to lock in the word, a stable, sensory hook doing the retrieval work that raw memorization can’t.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Type-scenes do the same job at a larger scale. The arming sequence of greaves, breastplate, sword, shield, helmet, spear, always in that order, is a memory palace with the walls already built. The poet isn’t inventing structure in real time; he’s walking a known route and hanging new details on fixed pegs. A language learner building a mental house of vocabulary, or working through a peg system of numbered associations, is doing the identical thing: offloading the burden of structure onto a stable scaffold, so the mind is free to handle only what’s actually new.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And the poem’s flat-out repeated lines, the messages delivered word-for-word, the dawn formula recurring untouched scene after scene, are nothing but spaced repetition. The line doesn’t change because it doesn’t need to; each recurrence is another pass that deepens the groove. This is the same principle behind a flashcard you review five times instead of once: not more information, more traction.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

These were not lazy padding; they were cognitive tools that allowed a singer to compose in performance, listeners to follow and remember, and a tradition to survive across generations without writing. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Repetition is a feature of human nature, not a bug to be edited out.<\/blockquote>
<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Human Infrastructure<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Repetition is a feature of human nature, not a bug to be edited out.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recovering respect for it in education, language learning, liturgy, storytelling, and even ordinary conversation is part of resisting the attention economy\u2019s demand that everything be new, fast, and disposable. Homer still teaches us how memory actually works when it is allowed to be human.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even ordinary conversation reveals how deeply repetitive human beings are. Linguists call these exchanges <\/span>phatic<\/span><\/i>: speech whose primary purpose is not to convey new information but to establish, maintain, or reaffirm social connection. I have seen this all my life. My mother can register my mood before I have finished saying \u201cgood morning.\u201d The words themselves are almost secondary; what matters is the repeated act of opening the channel, carrying tone and presence that no transcript can capture.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the page, stripped of voice, timing, and presence, the same phrases can look empty or sentimental. In life they function as relational infrastructure. Each recurrence does not mainly add new data; it renews the bond, signals continued presence, and keeps the channel open. The repetition itself is the point.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is why language instruction begins with a small set of ritual formulas (Bonjour, \u039a\u03b1\u03bb\u03b7\u03bc\u03ad\u03c1\u03b1, Buenos d\u00edas, Good morning, and the various forms of \u201cI love you\u201d) long before students meet complex grammar. These are not chosen because they are the most informative sentences in the language. They are chosen because they are the minimal repeated acts that allow human connection to begin and continue. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In some cultures, the verbal formula is regularly paired with a further ritual. In Brazilian Portuguese a greeting is often followed at once by a request for a ben\u00e7\u00e3o (a blessing), especially when addressing parents or grandparents. Among the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, a younger person lowers the head and an elder responds by touching it, combining greeting, respect, and blessing in a single ceremonial act. In Japan, <\/span>arigat\u014d<\/span><\/i> (thank you) is commonly accompanied by a bow. Words and gesture form one repeated unit. What looks like simple politeness is actually a compact social technology built on recurrence.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Language learning starts here for the same reason ordinary life does: this is how people orient themselves toward one another. What looks redundant when flattened onto the page turns out to be load-bearing when it remains embodied and repeated. In this respect, the humble greeting and the declaration of love belong to the same family as Homer\u2019s formulas. Both show that we do not merely tolerate repetition. We depend on it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Modern digital life runs on the opposite premise. Algorithmic feeds, infinite scroll, even our literary taste: all of it prizes perpetual novelty over return. We summarize, skip, and optimize, mistaking compression for progress. But nothing that matters to us was ever built in a single pass. Character isn’t formed by one good decision; it’s formed by the same decision, repeated, until it becomes who you are. A relationship isn’t secured by one “I love you”; it’s secured by the thousandth one. A language isn’t learned by hearing a word once; it’s learned by meeting it again, and again, until it stops being foreign. Homer’s singers understood that the mind doesn’t hold on to what’s new, it holds on to what returns.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The attention economy is betting that we’ve forgotten this. Homer is still around to remind us we haven’t.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Image licensed via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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She lives with her family and animals on a farm in upstate New York.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/rebeka-goodman\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2714"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101861,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101856\/revisions\/101861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101856"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101846,"date":"2026-09-09T20:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T00:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101846"},"modified":"2026-09-09T10:02:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T14:02:36","slug":"the-american-pope-and-the-american-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101846\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Pope and the American Constitution\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/leo-xiv\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">writes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: \u201cWhen subsidiarity is not linked to solidarity, it ends up becoming merely the protection of particular interests; when solidarity is not supported by subsidiarity, it degenerates into a form of welfare that does not foster responsibility.\u201d The principle of subsidiarity insists that higher authorities exist to assist, not absorb, the lower associations of family, parish, township, and state. Solidarity, its necessary counterpart, requires that those same lower associations never forget their obligation to the common good.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the size of today\u2019s federal bureaucracy, it seems hard to believe that the United States government was ever an example of this link, this harmony between subsidiarity and solidarity. Yet this was the opinion of Orestes Brownson, the nineteenth-century intellectual and Catholic convert, as he reflected on the Constitution at the close of the Civil War. Looking to his thought to regain this balance would be helpful to those who, holding to natural law and the common good, seek a way forward for our divided nation.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The balance was not achieved easily. As the debates on the ratification of the U.S. Constitution raged in the state legislatures, an overwhelming concern was precisely this balance between solidarity and subsidiarity. Many believed that the document produced by the Constitutional Convention vested too much power in the national government at the expense of the sovereign states.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the addition of the Bill of Rights, a supermajority of Americans agreed that the new form of government adequately protected the citizens from centralization, providing an acceptable balance between subsidiarity and solidarity. One of George Washington\u2019s greatest achievements was to maintain this balance throughout his presidency in the face of the subsidiarity faction led by Thomas Jefferson and the solidarity of people in the North, particularly Alexander Hamilton and John Adams.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Providential Constitution<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The American Republic,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> his 1865 masterwork, Brownson challenged Americans to confront the deeper truths of our nationality:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among nations, no one has more need of full knowledge of itself than the United States, and no one has hitherto had less. It has hardly had a distinct consciousness of its own national existence, and has lived the irreflective life of the child, with no severe trial, till the recent rebellion, to throw it back on itself and compel it to reflect on its own constitution, its own separate existence, individuality, tendencies, and end.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The nation\u2019s having survived the ordeals of its birth and infancy and, more recently, a great internal conflict, Brownson contended that the \u201cdistinct consciousness of [our] own national existence\u201d is that our form of government is providential. It was providential in its origin, being the confluence of flight from religious persecution, English common law, prior experience of self-government, and so many other factors. It was also providential in its call to responsibility and virtue. Madison\u2019s \u201cbalance of competing interests\u201d is based on the reality of original sin and the wounded nature of mankind, but there is another reality; Jesus has redeemed man and calls us to share in the divine nature. Brownson sees the Constitution as a call to give glory to God through the self-sacrifice required in serving the common good.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Furthermore, it is providential in its structure, based on universal principles linking solidarity and subsidiary. Brownson argued that the \u201creal character\u201d of the Constitution secures national unity without consolidation by asserting the authority of society (solidarity) while preserving the rights of the several states without disintegration by protecting individual freedom and local governance (subsidiarity). Using the terms \u201cpersonal democracy\u201d and \u201chumanitarian democracy,\u201d Brownson was praising what Pope Leo XIV now calls the \u201clink\u201d that alone prevents both egoism and bureaucratic paternalism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of this led Brownson to conclude that the Constitution was providential in its composition. God was the primary cause of both the unwritten and written constitutions, with the founders acting as secondary causes, creating a sacred framework for ordered liberty.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Civil War: The Collision of Subsidiarity and Solidarity<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brownson argued that the American Civil War was caused by \u201cequally destructive exaggerations\u201d of two fundamental truths\u2014solidarity and subsidiarity\u2014that the Constitution was designed to harmonize. This fact, which had eluded the attention of historians and political commentators, is accomplished by its territorial character: what we today refer to as federalism, the diffusion of power to the states and local communities. This was the only way to recognize \u201cplace, tradition, religion and family in the various states,\u201d and to accommodate the vast differences in \u201cthe sentiments, convictions, and habits of a local people\u201d due to their geography, natural resources, and local economies. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brownson held that it was this territorial democracy, the preservation of the true Constitution, that was at stake in the Civil War. Americans in the North had for the most part fought to preserve the Union, not to impose the northern ideology of humanitarian democracy in the form of abolitionism. In Brownson\u2019s words:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[T]he great body of the people in the non-slaveholding States, wedded to American democracy as they were, and are, could never, as much as they detested slavery, be induced to make common cause with the abolitionists \u2026The great body of the loyal people instinctively felt that pure socialism is as incompatible with American democracy as pure individualism. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Personal democracy divorces itself from a broader social responsibility. This purely individualistic strain of democracy was promoted by the followers of John Locke, who denied society\u2019s obligation to protect the weak and helpless. The logical consequence is anarchy as each individual or special interest group pursues its private interest and loses sight of any common good.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the 1850s, Brownson supported the southern states\u2019 efforts to protect themselves from the excesses of federal power but, as the calls for secession became louder, he increasingly warned that the concept of state sovereignty was being taken to an extreme that ignored the higher value of national unity and would remove the necessary counterweight to humanitarian democracy. This would negate the \u201cDivine Idea\u201d behind the Constitution.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the other hand, Brownson spent the first half of his life in New England, the womb of humanitarian democracy, which he described as \u201ca menace to our future\u201d and whose nature is \u201cto mind every one’s business but its own.\u201d He criticized any movement, such as abolitionism or temperance, which \u201cscorns all geographical lines, effaces all individualities, and professes to plant itself on humanity alone.\u201d Such a movement would attempt to protect the vulnerable by using centralized federal power to forcefully overturn local laws.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The humanitarians are more dangerous in principle than the egoists, for they have the appearance of building on a broader and deeper foundation, of being more Christian, more philosophic, more generous and philanthropic; but Satan is never more successful than under the guise of an angel of light. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brownson\u2019s sober assessment at the end of the Civil War was, \u201cIf the victory of the Union should turn out to be a victory for the humanitarian democracy, the civilized world will have no reason to applaud it.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. He challenges us to \u201crediscover the true Constitution.\u201d Now would be an appropriate time to follow his advice.<\/blockquote><div class='blockquote-share'><span class='s-options'><a class=\"cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_1 cmsmasters-icon-facebook-1 cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. He challenges us to \u201crediscover the true Constitution.\u201d Now would be an appropriate time to follow his advice.\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"blockquote_tw cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_3 cmsmasters-icon-twitter cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. He challenges us to \u201crediscover the true Constitution.\u201d Now would be an appropriate time to follow his advice.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><b>Solidarity and Subsidiarity Out of Balance<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In his annual message to Congress in December 1862, President Lincoln proposed a gradual elimination of slavery with federal compensation to the slave owners. Brownson disagreed with Lincoln on particulars but also promoted a gradual incorporation of the freed slaves into the body politic. But calls for gradualism were ignored.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With the war\u2019s conclusion, the North had defeated the South and humanitarian democracy was intent on refashioning southern culture’s Reconstruction. The immediate release of the slaves without compensation embittered the white population of the South which violently turned on the black population, resulting in the Fourteenth Amendment. As necessary as it might have been given the circumstances, Brownson was concerned that it represented a revolutionary transfer of power from the states to the federal government in which each state lost the right to define its political people and freely exercise its own character. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Throughout the twentieth century, this move to redefine America by disturbing the delicate balance of solidarity and subsidiarity was ratified by the Supreme Court by incorporating the Bill of Rights into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The same expansive reading of due process has since nationalized controversies\u2014from public education curricula to emergency health measures\u2014that the original Constitution left to the varying judgment of the states.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reader need not be reminded of the recent triumph of solidarity over subsidiarity when the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was invoked to establish same-sex marriage as the law of the land in the case of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Obergefell <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hodges<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We the People<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, that is, two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of all state legislatures, continued the erosion of subsidiarity with the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth amendments. Of these, the most significant might be the Sixteenth, granting the federal government the right to tax income and fund the administrative state, the unelected experts and bureaucrats that keep it operating and the myriad regulations that so complicate our lives and mock the very concept of subsidiarity.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Congress habitually supports solidarity at the expense of subsidiarity when it abdicates its constitutional responsibilities to the executive branch spawning innumerable three-letter agencies. Both political parties are guilty of this; both parties blame the other for doing it when it behooves them, and both parties continue doing it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1873, Brownson lamented in his journal, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brownson\u2019s Quarterly Review,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cI cannot conceive a more profoundly philosophic, or more admirably devised constitution, than that of our own government.\u201d Yet \u201cthe people have forgotten its providential origin, treat it as their own creation, as a thing they have made, and may alter or unmake at their pleasure.\u201d They perceive any violation of the Constitution as \u201cno moral offense, for it is the violation of no moral law, of no eternal and immutable right. Nothing hinders the people, when they find the constitution in the way of some favorite project on which they are bent, from trampling it under their feet, and passing on as if it never had any existence.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Restoring the Providential Balance<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brownson\u2019s insistence that the \u201ctrue Constitution\u201d was providential\u2014a gift of God for all humanity\u2014brings us back to Pope Leo\u2019s concern. A century and a half ago, Brownson held that our Constitution was a fully negotiated balance between solidarity and subsidiarity; a balance that has been lost. Today\u2019s political discussions, pitting one faction against the other, and the politicians that it engenders are incapable of restoring the link, the balance, between solidarity and subsidiarity that Pope Leo regards as essential for every society. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Solidarity and subsidiarity will only be linked by those willing to sacrifice their own opinions to uphold universal principles and the common good; incomprehensible concepts for those imbued, on the left and on the right, with the individualism of Enlightenment thinking. Therefore, before political action, there must be a total recasting of our thinking on government. The renewed emphasis on civics education will be fruitless if it only regurgitates Locke and Kant. The \u201coriginalism\u201d we must seek is not the ideas of the founders but the Divine Idea behind the founding itself. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is hard to identify any living American who compares to the profundity of Brownson\u2019s thought. He alone shows us the goal, the path forward, and that path is a return to a constitution similar to the one he found so \u201cadmirably devised.\u201d We the People need the resolve to proceed step by step, along the \u201clong march through the institutions\u201d with the generosity of the founders, knowing that what we do today will only be enjoyed by future generations. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In his day, Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. He challenges us to \u201crediscover the true Constitution.\u201d These years leading up to its 250th anniversary would be an appropriate time to follow his advice.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/we-the-people\/193504694\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">licensed via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his day, Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. He challenges us to \u201crediscover the true Constitution.\u201d Now would be an appropriate time to follow his advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1287,"featured_media":101850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"636434cc-bb84-49b8-aae3-630d713bdcf5","beyondwords_preview_token":"d5e1a6ff-9315-4c08-90c9-ac2d6725f4fe","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[2644,1163],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1231],"class_list":["post-101846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-250th","category-and-american-constitutionalism","pillars-politics-and-law"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,1287],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The American Pope and the American Constitution\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In his day, Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. He challenges us to \u201crediscover the true Constitution.\u201d Now would be an appropriate time to follow his advice.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101846\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Thomas McDonough\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Thomas McDonough\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e04a038bb5720d2a8773a1c49822e696\"},\"headline\":\"The American Pope and the American Constitution\u00a0\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-10T00:00:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2075,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/AdobeStock_193504694.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"250th\",\"and American Constitutionalism\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/\",\"name\":\"The American Pope and the American Constitution\u00a0 - Public Discourse\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/101846\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/09\\\/AdobeStock_193504694.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-10T00:00:20+00:00\",\"description\":\"In his day, Brownson advocated for a \u201clong-term, multi-pronged rediscovery of the true Constitution,\u201d an ordered liberty founded on a balance of unity in diversity based on natural law and the pursuit of the common good. 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Eastman issued weekly paychecks and distributed bonuses and profit-sharing payments. In 1919, Eastman gave employees one-third of his personal holdings in Kodak stock, then worth $10 million. The firm later established retirement annuities, life insurance, and disability benefits. Eastman believed that the goodwill and loyalty of employees were important sources of Kodak\u2019s prosperity. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After World War II, major American firms adopted the Kodak model of investing in their employees. In <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/End-Loyalty-Rise-Fall-America\/dp\/1586489143\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The End of Loyalty<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, former <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wall Street Journal<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reporter Rick Wartzman describes the 1940s and 1950s as a working-class golden age in which firms such as General Motors, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola felt obligated to \u201clend a helping hand to workers\u201d and to \u201cshield them against the vicissitudes of life.\u201d \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Paul Osterman\u2019s important new book, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, describes how thoroughly that model has eroded. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Rise of the Disposable Worker<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Osterman, Professor <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Emeritus <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at MIT\u2019s Sloan School of Management, conducted a nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 civilian, nonagricultural working adults. He also conducted 100 in-depth interviews with workers, employees, and staffing agencies. Osterman estimates that roughly 35 percent of American workers now fit into one of the categories he describes as \u201cdisposable.\u201d This study provides statistical evidence of a trend that many American workers have intuited: American firms are increasingly seeking ways of obtaining labor without paying benefits or making long-term commitments to workers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The precariousness of work affects skilled and unskilled workers. Contingent work is a growing share of employment in information technology, law, and journalism. Higher education relies heavily on low-paid adjunct faculty who function as gig workers rather than institutionally supported employees. Two-thirds of university courses are now taught by instructors that are neither tenured nor tenure-track. Precarization (meaning contingent or \u201cinsecure\u201d work) is spreading to the last bastions of stable government employment as federal government agencies replace career civil servants with contractors. An <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/icma.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2017%20ASD%20Summary%20Report%20Final_2.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">International City\/Country Management Association national survey<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> found that 80 percent of local governments used private sector contractors to deliver services.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This precarization particularly affects young workers. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2023\/05\/23\/young-adults-in-the-u-s-are-reaching-key-life-milestones-later-than-in-the-past\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two-thirds of those aged 25-35 hold insecure jobs, compared to one-third of those aged 45-54.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This change places young workers at a particular disadvantage, making it increasingly difficult to purchase homes and accumulate wealth over time. Only highly specialized jobs resist this trend. Scientific research and cutting-edge engineering offer high levels of stable employment, but these sectors represent a tiny fraction of the workforce.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Osterman identifies three broad groups of disposable workers: freelancers, contractors, and \u201cmarginal employees.\u201d The last category is the book\u2019s most useful conceptual contribution. Marginal employees technically work for the organization that employs them, but they lack many of the features traditionally associated with a career: meaningful training, advancement opportunities, and employment security. Adjunct professors and staff attorneys, for example, are both doing essential work at their institutions, but they remain permanently outside the institution\u2019s core, and they are deprived of the benefits of standard employment. Some highly skilled freelancers and contractors do indeed prefer this arrangement, and Osterman is careful to acknowledge them. But his research suggests that the vast majority of contractors and marginal employees would prefer the security and opportunities associated with standard employment. Younger workers, especially, express a desire for traditional W2 employment arrangements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>From Kodak to Walmart<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/10\/26\/business\/walmart-memo-suggests-ways-to-cut-employee-benefit-costs.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An internal Walmart benefits memorandum<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that was leaked to the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2005 captures the distance between the old and new conceptions of employment with unusual clarity. The memo, written by Susan Chambers, then the company\u2019s executive vice president for benefits, cites rising employee tenure as a cost problem. Chambers calculated that a Walmart associate with seven years at the company cost almost 55 percent more in wages and benefits than an associate with one year of service, even though the company found no corresponding increase in productivity. Longer-serving workers were more expensive partly because their wages rose and they qualified for more benefits.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chambers\u2019s logic is almost a photographic negative of George Eastman\u2019s. Eastman connected profit-sharing to employee goodwill and loyalty. But in Chambers\u2019s analysis, loyalty is a liability. The memo advocated increasing the number of part-time employees as a cost-saving measure. It also analyzed employees according to their healthcare costs and productivity and proposed redesigning jobs to incorporate physical activity. This would discourage older and less healthy applicants. The memo stated that senior executives received these recommendations \u201centhusiastically.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Walmart memo reveals the calculus governing the companies that Osterman showcases in his book. Once labor is treated principally as a variable cost, many of the attributes traditionally associated with a good employee\u2014experience, tenure, accrued benefits\u2014can begin to look like financial burdens. Although this memo was a public relations disaster for Walmart, companies across industries\u2014including technology firms, delivery services, newspapers, law firms, and universities\u2014have all since adopted the employment practices it outlined.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And companies have powerful incentives to reduce their commitments to employees. Outsourcing converts fixed labor costs into contracts that can be quickly eliminated. Part-time work allows staffing to track fluctuations in demand. Freelancing gives firms access to expertise without obligating them to support a career. Keeping employees in jobs without promotion ladders reduces the cost of training and development. Financial markets reward efficiency, and managers naturally want to make easy adjustments when business conditions change.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Osterman does not deny any of this. Indeed, one of the virtues of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disposable Workers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is that its argument does not promote conspiracy theories in which executives sit in conference rooms and plot against employees. The system can produce disposable workers even when every individual decision makes conventional business sense. That is precisely what makes the problem so intractable.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The rise of AI makes the book particularly timely, though Osterman does not blame AI for a transformation that began decades ago. Public fear has centered on whether AI will replace workers altogether. But Osterman points to a more immediate reality: AI is making employers more hesitant to commit to regular employees even when it does not eliminate their jobs. If managers do not know what skills they will require three years from now, contractors and freelancers become attractive hedges against uncertainty. A company can buy the labor it needs today without making promises about tomorrow. Osterman\u2019s survey reveals that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/06\/05\/ai-is-now-the-leading-reason-companies-give-for-cutting-jobs-says-new-report-what-that-means-for-workers.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nearly half<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of executives cite AI to justify job cuts. In many of these cases, firms deploy no new technology at all, but the public tends to accept technological change as a pretext for restructuring.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>Incentives that produce disposable work will have to be counterbalanced by institutions that give workers greater power and make investments in employees worthwhile again.<\/blockquote><div class='blockquote-share'><span class='s-options'><a class=\"cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_1 cmsmasters-icon-facebook-1 cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=Incentives that produce disposable work will have to be counterbalanced by institutions that give workers greater power and make investments in employees worthwhile again.\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"blockquote_tw cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_3 cmsmasters-icon-twitter cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=Incentives that produce disposable work will have to be counterbalanced by institutions that give workers greater power and make investments in employees worthwhile again.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><b>The Social Costs of Precarious Employment<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our broader economic context makes Osterman\u2019s findings especially alarming. Work insecurity is producing systemic problems that are creating a national crisis. It is becoming increasingly difficult for vast swaths of Americans to maintain a middle-class life. Household consumption has <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/journaldunprogressiste.fr\/en\/book-review-disposable-workers-by-paul-osterman-how-america-has-precarious-its-workers-over-40-years-en\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">remained flat<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> since 2022 despite steady economic expansion. Disposable workers consume significantly less than standard employees with similar income out of fear over the future. Borrowing money from banks is becoming more burdensome: the vast majority of mortgage loans now ask for evidence of<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nerdwallet.com\/mortgages\/learn\/getting-a-mortgage-without-a-perfect-2-year-work-history\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> permanent, stable employment of more than two years<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0 This restriction particularly affects young workers, of whom only 23 percent meet this criterion compared to 67 percent in 2015. Oren Cass\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/americancompass.org\/cost-of-thriving-index-shows-middle-class-life-unaffordable-in-america\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cost-of-Thriving Index<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> calculates that a basket of major middle-class expenses that required roughly forty weeks of a typical male worker\u2019s earnings in 1985 required sixty-two weeks by 2022.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The postwar American employment compact was not universal. Millions of women, black workers, immigrants, agricultural laborers, domestic workers, and others were excluded from its most generous forms, and the supposedly golden age of employment contained plenty of exploitation. But rejecting nostalgia does not require us to pretend that we have lost nothing of value. Osterman does not argue for a return to the 1950s. Rather, he claims that the next model of American employment must find a way to restore reciprocity between employers and employees without sacrificing the flexibility that today\u2019s employment market requires.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Osterman\u2019s policy proposals\u2014stronger worker organization, legal reforms, public protections, consumer pressure, and measures tailored to different categories of contingent workers\u2014recognize that incentives that produce disposable work will have to be counterbalanced by institutions that give workers greater power and make investments in employees worthwhile again. This is what makes <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disposable Workers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> more than a book about changing employment arrangements. It is about the obligations that should accompany economic relationships in a just society. We have organized a society in which employers demand maximum flexibility and workers bear an ever-larger share of the risk. Such an arrangement has frightful social, psychological, and political costs. People who cannot count on stable employment find it harder to plan for the future, build wealth, support families, or develop lasting attachments to institutions. This is a recipe for social disintegration and political chaos.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">George Eastman\u2019s firm was not a model workplace in every respect, and the paternalistic welfare capitalism of his era is neither recoverable nor necessarily desirable. But Eastman understood something that our contemporary system of labor flexibility obscures: a company\u2019s relationship with its workers is not merely a transaction. Employers depend upon workers\u2019 knowledge, effort, loyalty, and trust. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disposable Workers<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> makes a persuasive case that an economy that continually demands these things of its workers while offering little security in return cannot indefinitely escape the consequences of social disintegration. As management consultant Peter Drucker <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bookey.app\/book\/the-essential-drucker\/quote\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">said<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cA healthy business … cannot exist in a sick society.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/stressed-business-woman\/93150196\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An economy that continually makes demands of its workers while offering little security in return cannot escape the consequences of social disintegration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":606,"featured_media":101841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"1a032b6b-62aa-42fd-8338-5dda4d8828c0","beyondwords_preview_token":"9618e5df-996c-4596-93a3-727054c26646","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[8,12,608,2427],"tags":[],"coauthors":[294],"class_list":["post-101836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-economics","category-human-dignity","category-work","pillars-business-and-economics"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,606],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - 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The book was first published on March 9, 1776, three months before the Declaration of Independence. Since then, Smith has often been caricatured as a proponent of cold, unbridled self-interest and the \u201cinvisible hand.\u201d But his thought is much broader and more nuanced than simplistic portraits sometimes make it seem. He explored a mind-boggling array of interdisciplinary topics in this enormous tome, from the education economics of getting better teachers in the classroom to the wartime economics of nomadic, agricultural, and seafaring cultures. One of the recurring themes in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wealth of Nations<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that is most relevant to the contemporary globalized world is the importance of connectivity, a topic about which Smith had a great deal of firsthand knowledge.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>From Glasgow to the New World<\/b> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smith had a front-row seat to the interconnectedness of global commerce when he taught at the University of Glasgow in his native Scotland from 1751 to 1764. During this time, Glasgow was a top shipping hub of the British empire, processing and repackaging colonial imports for reexport to continental Europe: sugar and rum from the Caribbean, tobacco from the American colonies, tea and spices from the East Indies, wine from Mediterranean Europe, and furs and wood from the Baltic region and Russia. Smith\u2019s Glasgow was the global leader in the tobacco trade and on its way to becoming Britain\u2019s leading linen exporter. Through Glasgow\u2019s banks, its tobacco lords funded American plantations, the slave trade, and shipments of supplies to colonists. Smith\u2019s direct observations of connectivity and its effects in Glasgow helped shape his analysis of what he called advanced \u201ccommercial society.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of Smith\u2019s insights is that improving transport connectivity promotes the division of labor, which vastly increases productivity. In his time, waterways were the primary means of shipping, and he observed that when access to waterways connects a place to new markets, this encourages increased production\u2014since goods lacking demand at home may now find it abroad. Increased production creates jobs, which attract migrants, increasing the population. This decreases the cost of labor while also creating a larger domestic market, further encouraging increased production. The larger workforce also makes it possible to break production into more specialized tasks, increasing the division of labor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smith believed that as workers focus on more specific tasks, it becomes more likely that they will discover new technologies\u2014like machines and tools\u2014to do their jobs well. Meanwhile, the larger economy provides a greater pool of capital to invest in these technologies. In short, transport connectivity lowers labor costs and increases the division of labor, spurring faster innovation, and this leads to far greater output. As Smith put it, \u201cBy opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive power, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society. These great and important services foreign trade is continually occupied in performing.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Smith, transport connectivity could lead to economic prosperity. In Smith\u2019s time, the British had transport connections with four continents, from India and British Guiana to West Africa, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and the thirteen American colonies. Smith highlights how the availability of American colonial markets impelled the British to expand and improve their own industries. \u201cBy opening a new and inexhaustible market to all the commodities of Europe, [the discovery of America] gave occasion to new divisions of labour and improvements of art, which in the narrow circle of the ancient commerce could never have taken place, for want of a market to take off the greater part of their produce.\u201d Connecting to New World markets incentivized Old World production\u2014and the Industrial Revolution.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While Smith emphasizes the benefits of connectivity via waterway transport, he also explores how these benefits can diminish when multiple states along a route can restrict its use. He cites the case of the Danube River, which in his time was split between Austrian control of the Western Danube and Islamic Ottoman control of the Eastern Danube. To Smith, the river was \u201cof very little use\u201d to the nations along it (like Bavaria, Austria, and Hungary), because none of them had control of its course farther along. Today, this specific problem has been solved: under the 1948 Belgrade Convention, all ten countries along the Danube agreed to share the right to commercial transport along it. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But the larger issue Smith raises, of the potential for nations to block each other\u2019s access to waterways, still very much exists. A recent example is the Panama Canal, where decades of Chinese operation of two ports raised major U.S. security concerns that China could block canal traffic during a geopolitical conflict. This is part of the reason why, in recent years, the United States has worked to pry the operation of these ports from Chinese hands. As a result, the government of Panama finally took back control of the two ports earlier this year.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Challenges and Triumphs of Connectivity<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wealth of Nations<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> came out (the first edition sold out in six months), within a decade, the early United States became a case study in the effects of losing connectivity when enemies block waterways. To contain America\u2019s expansion in the wake of the Revolutionary War, Spanish Florida blocked U.S. navigation through the lower Mississippi River and the Port of New Orleans from 1784 to 1795. This crippled and outraged frontier farmers in the Ohio Valley, who found it too expensive to ship bulky farm products across the Appalachians to eastern markets. The Mississippi, flowing to the Gulf of Mexico via New Orleans, was their umbilical cord to international trade. Many of these Midwestern farmers were Revolutionary War veterans, and there was a real threat that they might either attack the Spanish, break away as an independent republic, or even ally with Britain or France to regain access to the Mississippi. When the conflict was finally resolved with the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo (aka Pinckney\u2019s Treaty), the reestablishment of U.S. transport connectivity via the Mississippi led to a massive economic boom: by 1802, trade from the Ohio valley to New Orleans had grown from almost nothing to $2.6 million. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In fact, the Spanish blockade of the Mississippi focused the attention of the Framers of the Constitution on the potential for American states to block each other\u2019s access to rivers\u2014the same potential Smith had observed on the Danube. This concern became a major reason why the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. This power extends to the regulation of interstate waterways, as confirmed by the 1824 U.S. Supreme Court decision <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gibbons<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Ogden<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The commerce of the United States with foreign nations is that of the whole United States Every district has a right to participate in it. The deep streams which penetrate our country in every direction pass through the interior of almost every state in the Union, and furnish the means of exercising this right. If Congress has the power to regulate it, that power must be exercised whenever the subject exists.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some might object that, as an advocate for free trade, Smith ought to oppose any government regulation in the economy. But his views on the role of government are not so black and white. He finds that governments have three primary duties: to protect society from foreign invasion, to administer justice to protect people from internal oppression, and to provide public goods that the private sector cannot profitably maintain. To fulfill the third duty, he argues that governments should invest in public works like \u201cgood roads, bridges, navigable canals, [and] harbours,\u201d because projects like these are \u201cbeneficial to the whole society.\u201d And Smith says infrastructure like this can be maintained through modest fees, like small tolls and port duties. (Today, some countries generate enormous wealth from charging such fees. For example, the Panama Canal brought Panama a net profit of $4.1 billion in FY 2024.)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Erie Canal is a classic example of the sort of government-sponsored transport connectivity that, as Smith described, can quickly boost population growth, the division of labor, and productivity. Built by New York\u2019s state government and completed in 1825, the canal linked the Great Lakes region to New York City via the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. Canal towns\u2019 products could float easily to distant markets on horse-drawn barges and boats. Soon after the canal began operating, what started as tiny, remote settlements along it boomed in population and production. Syracuse ballooned from 500 people in 1825 to more than 22,000 in 1850, as it became \u201cthe Salt City,\u201d the source of more than half of America\u2019s salt. Over the same span, Rochester quickly became the \u201cFlour City,\u201d the largest flour producer in the world. Buffalo\u2019s population octupled, making it \u201cthe Queen City,\u201d the second-largest in New York state after the \u201cking,\u201d New York City.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Buffalo\u2019s division of labor exploded thanks to the connectivity brought by the Erie Canal. By 1850, the city had become the world\u2019s largest grain port and the grain storage capital of North America. Just to handle and finance the relentless flow of cargo, Buffalo needed specialized grain elevator operators, millers, ropemakers to make towlines, coopers to make barrels, shipwrights, dockworkers, brokers, and forwarders. As Smith theorized, this hyper-specialization increased both production and innovation. It drastically increased the quantity of freight a single worker could process\u2014and led to the invention of the grain elevator in Buffalo in 1842 by Joseph Dart and Robert Dunbar. Meanwhile, as the Erie Canal quickly became a highway for migrants headed to the Midwest frontier, Buffalo was the last stop and became the \u201cGateway to the West,\u201d a bustling hub for travelers. This drove a massive boom in housing and hotels that created thousands of hospitality jobs. In short, the history of Buffalo\u2019s growth following the opening of the Erie Canal is a case study in the chain of benefits that Smith thought government-sponsored connectivity could bring.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smith\u2019s insights into the benefits of connectivity apply not just to waterways but to any mode of transport used for commerce, from roads to rail to airways. And they apply not just to exports but to creating domestic market access for international customers. Dubai is a good example.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>Smith\u2019s insights into the benefits of connectivity apply not just to waterways but to any mode of transport used for commerce, from roads to rail to airways.<\/blockquote><div class='blockquote-share'><span class='s-options'><a class=\"cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_1 cmsmasters-icon-facebook-1 cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=Smith\u2019s insights into the benefits of connectivity apply not just to waterways but to any mode of transport used for commerce, from roads to rail to airways.\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"blockquote_tw cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_3 cmsmasters-icon-twitter cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=Smith\u2019s insights into the benefits of connectivity apply not just to waterways but to any mode of transport used for commerce, from roads to rail to airways.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1960, Dubai was a fishing and trading village. Dubai International Airport opened that year with a sand runway. But the city expanded rapidly after the discovery of oil in 1961. As Smith advocated, Dubai\u2019s government created new transport infrastructure. The Port of Jebel Ali was completed in 1979 and is now the busiest in the Middle East. In 1985, Dubai invested oil profits to start Emirates Airlines, which today ranks among the world\u2019s top five. Continuous expansions of Dubai International Airport have helped it become the second busiest in the world.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This hyper-accelerated transport infrastructure development over decades has brought whole new industries to Dubai, like tourism and international business administration, amid one of the world\u2019s largest and most sustained urban construction booms. Dubai had over 19 million visitors in 2025, similar to Tokyo. It hosts the regional headquarters of companies like Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and CNN.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These and other industries\u2014especially construction\u2014have attracted migrants, causing Dubai\u2019s population to quadruple since 2000. This has grown its internal market. And as Dubai\u2019s division of labor has multiplied, the productivity of its workers has increased massively: in what was a society of fishermen, nomads, and pearl divers, more than 52 percent now have college degrees, tens of thousands are professional doctors, engineers, and managers, and the city is now a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/gulfnews.com\/business\/economy\/uae-ranks-among-leading-global-ai-hubs-in-ai-index-2026-1.500508377\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">global leader in using AI in the workplace<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Overall, while maritime connectivity first allowed Dubai to become wealthy by exporting oil and gas, today air connectivity brings the city far more profits\u2014including income from its airlines themselves and the international tourism, business, and real estate sectors they make possible. Air connectivity increased the demand for space in Dubai itself, which has allowed its urban landscape to grow and diversify on a scale that it never imagined.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Connectivity in the Digital Age<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today, not just transport but also telecommunications connectivity can provide the sort of access to markets that Smith found encourages increased production, new industries, and the division of labor. E-commerce and videoconferencing have allowed millions to become specialized traders, tutors, freelancers, and consultants. In fact, many markets, like cryptocurrency trading platforms and eBay, are only accessible online. Connectivity to these markets in the cloud incentivizes new industries, boosts productivity, facilitates the division of labor, and creates wealth\u2014all effects that Smith identified.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adam Smith\u2019s timeless perspectives on connectivity still help make sense of the world 250 years after he first published <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wealth of Nations<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Connectivity still stirs the human mind to dream of new ways to trade with distant markets, and this can fuel the growth of whole cities\u2014sometimes nearly from scratch, as Dubai and the Erie Canal towns illustrate. Among the many other connectivity-related topics Smith explores are the nature of international finance\u2014especially currency trading in the famous Bank of Amsterdam\u2014and the advantages of sharing cultural connections with trading partners. Overall, Smith\u2019s discussions of connectivity are just one example of the wide-ranging topics in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wealth of Nations<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that are well worth exploring.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed<a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/the-monument-of-adam-smith-on-the-royal-mile-and-the-apse-of-the-st-giles-cathedral-lit-by-the-setting-sun-at-the-background-edinburgh-scotland-uk\/164746744\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Adam Smith\u2019s timeless perspectives on connectivity still help make sense of the world 250 years after he first published <i>The Wealth of Nations<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2713,"featured_media":101821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"e542a7c3-d90e-4456-8971-1609211ace94","beyondwords_preview_token":"216e609f-fb46-448b-b1c8-3efcab021d52","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1197,12],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2681],"class_list":["post-101817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism","category-economics","pillars-business-and-economics"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,2713],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Adam Smith and the Value of Connectivity\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Adam Smith\u2019s timeless perspectives on connectivity still help make sense of the world 250 years after he first published The Wealth of Nations.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101817\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Robert C. 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Thornett\",\"description\":\"Robert C. Thornett is an educator and writer who has taught geography and social sciences at colleges and secondary schools in seven countries. He has published articles in American Affairs, Quillette, Law and Liberty, Education Next, On Classical Education, Modern Diplomacy, The Diplomat, Front Porch Republic, Commentary, Earth Island Journal, and others. He currently teaches Humane Letters and American Rhetorical Tradition at Chandler Prep in Arizona, a Great Hearts classical school.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/author\\\/robert-c-thornett\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Adam Smith and the Value of Connectivity\u00a0 - Public Discourse","description":"Adam Smith\u2019s timeless perspectives on connectivity still help make sense of the world 250 years after he first published The Wealth of Nations.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101817\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Robert C. 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Thornett","description":"Robert C. Thornett is an educator and writer who has taught geography and social sciences at colleges and secondary schools in seven countries. He has published articles in American Affairs, Quillette, Law and Liberty, Education Next, On Classical Education, Modern Diplomacy, The Diplomat, Front Porch Republic, Commentary, Earth Island Journal, and others. He currently teaches Humane Letters and American Rhetorical Tradition at Chandler Prep in Arizona, a Great Hearts classical school.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/robert-c-thornett\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2713"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101817"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101825,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101817\/revisions\/101825"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101817"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":19997,"date":"2026-09-03T20:00:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T00:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=19997"},"modified":"2026-09-02T11:44:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:44:41","slug":"labor-leisure-and-public-discourse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/19997\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor, Leisure, and <i>Public Discourse<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>This piece was originally published on September 5, 2017. We hope you enjoy revisiting a\u00a0<\/em>PD\u00a0<em>favorite over the holiday weekend.<\/em><\/h3>\n<p>How did you spend this Labor Day weekend? If you joined friends and family at an end-of-summer barbecue and enjoyed a beer or two, you actually may not be far off from the origins of the holiday.<\/p>\n<p>The first Labor Day celebration took place in New York City on September 5, 1882. A rather unfavorable description of the event appeared later that week in the <a href=\"http:\/\/chroniclingamerica.loc.gov\/lccn\/sn83030214\/1882-09-07\/ed-1\/seq-4\/\"><em>New-York Tribune<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em> The reporter noted wryly that, for participants in a labor demonstration, the laborers in question didn\u2019t seem very downtrodden.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There was nothing in the appearance of the men to indicate that they were suffering for good clothes or were weak from long famishing. They were not only neatly and comfortably, but in many cases rather extravagantly dressed. And they not only marched briskly in the sun for many miles, but a great multitude of them danced briskly and listened to rather dull speeches for the better part of the afternoon. There was no bread, but plenty of beer, provided for them, and they had change to pay for it. The gathering had none of the aspects of a bread riot, but every semblance of a picnic or political barbecue. . .<\/p>\n<p>The inscriptions on the banners can scarcely be said to represent truthfully the sentiments prevailing among honest workingmen. Some of them were rather old and familiar aphorisms; others were propositions which nobody ever thought of disputing; while nearly all were political, and a majority were decidedly demogogical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Though \u201cpolitical barbecues\u201d are sadly not common today, the types of the slogans used by the marchers don\u2019t sound so different from the empty catch-phrases and memes that dominate today’s political demonstrations and social media campaigns.<\/p>\n<p>Clearly, as a contemporary secular holiday, Labor Day doesn\u2019t have the rich history or deeply significant rituals of holy days like Easter, Rosh Hashanah, or Ramadan. Still, even if we reject its socialist underpinnings, its history gives us an important opportunity to reflect not only on the meaning of our work but also on how we choose to spend our leisure time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The History of Labor Day<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The labor movement of the late 1800s was dominated by misguided ideology, but it was responding to real injustices and hardships. Although the first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882, it was only recognized as a national holiday in 1894\u2014an election year\u2014in a conciliatory move by President Grover Cleveland in the wake of the federal government\u2019s violent role in breaking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/updates\/business-july-dec01-labor_day_9-2\/\">a nationwide strike of railroad workers<\/a> led by a young Eugene V. Debs.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cPullman strike\u201d started in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pullmanil.org\/town.htm\">Pullman, Illinois<\/a>, a utopian industrial town dreamed up by George Pullman, president of Pullman\u2019s Palace Car Company. The town was inhabited by employees who manufactured Pullman\u2019s signature railroad sleeping cars and lived in company-owned homes. After an economic downturn, the company laid off large numbers of workers and slashed wages without decreasing rent or working hours. The strike began peacefully, but it eventually escalated into violent and destructive riots. These were ultimately suppressed by national guardsmen, who killed somewhere between four and forty people.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Pullman-Strike\">complicated history and impact of the strike<\/a> are worth studying in more detail than I can give here. The effort was ultimately unsuccessful, landing Debs in prison and turning public sympathies against the Pullman workers and the labor movement in general. In the end, many of the demands of the labor movement were not fulfilled until the economic boom of the World War II era.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the vast majority of Americans enjoy better working conditions and more leisure time than the early members of the labor movement could have dreamed of. Though it\u2019s difficult to get accurate numbers, <a href=\"https:\/\/eh.net\/encyclopedia\/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history\/\">it is estimated<\/a> that the average manufacturing worker worked <em>seventy<\/em> <em>hours<\/em> a week in 1830, and around sixty hours a week in 1880. By contrast, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.t18.htm\">the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a> reported in July 2017 that the average employee in manufacturing worked about forty-one hours a week. Across all private sector non-farm jobs, the average was less than thirty-five hours. We seem to have achieved the goal summed up by the American Federation of Labor\u2019s nineteenth-century slogan: \u201cEight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s the question, isn\u2019t it? (Apart from how many of us actually get eight hours of rest each night . . .) What do we choose to do with the unprecedented amount of leisure time available to us?<\/p>\n<p><strong>For What We Will<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Today, technology continues to decrease the need for manual labor, streamlining our everyday tasks. As the mother of two babies under two years old, I am thankful for the internet, which allows me to do most of my work from home. I am able to continue to do meaningful work without sacrificing too much of my time with my family. To juggle all of my responsibilities, I find myself taking advantage of all kinds of time-saving services that allow me to acquire the things my family needs\u2014and things we simply want\u2014more and more easily, from Amazon\u2019s one-click ordering and free two-day shipping to Walmart\u2019s grocery pick-up service, which allows me to grocery shop from my phone and have food deposited into my car without ever having to unclip my children from their car seats. Suffice to say, I\u2019m thankful for technology.<\/p>\n<p>Yet these advances are not purely positive. As acquiring material goods and showcasing them on social media becomes easier and easier, it becomes more and more tempting to define ourselves as consumers, mistaking what we <em>own<\/em> for who we <em>are<\/em>. As daily tasks become more and more automated, we have to spend less and less time on them. But what do we do with the time we save?<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully, we spend a good portion of that time away from screens, interacting with the people we love, nurturing our families, and building strong local communities. Attending religious services and volunteering for various ministries, taking part in town and city events, volunteering at local nursing homes or soup kitchens, bringing meals to friends who are ill or who have recently had a new baby, hosting dinner parties\u2014all of these things are worthy uses of our time. It\u2019s all too easy to neglect the real work of building connections with the flesh-and-blood people who surround us when we could spend our days scrolling through Instagram or Facebook instead. Of course, it\u2019s not that social media or smartphones are bad\u2014it\u2019s just that we must exercise constant self-control if we are to use them well and integrate them into a balanced and humane life.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Future of <em>Public Discourse<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Part of living such a good life is developing our intellects. We are dependent <em>rational<\/em> animals, after all. We must seek out reading material and conversation partners who will challenge us to use our rational faculties. We need to take the time to think deeply\u2014to stop and consider the assumptions underlying our kneejerk reactions, considering opposing viewpoints and either modifying our own positions or understanding better our reasons for believing what we do. This practice helps us clarify our thoughts, making us more able to explain and argue for what is good and true.<\/p>\n<p>This kind of thinking compels us to ask ourselves whether we need to change our daily habits in order to live in accordance with what is right. It helps us to live up to our responsibilities to ourselves and to our spouses, parents, children, friends, fellow citizens, and God. Sometimes those responsibilities are tangible and immediate, whether that\u2019s changing your child\u2019s diaper or rescuing fellow citizens from a flood and letting <a href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/4919017\/gallery-furniture-houston-harvey-hurricane-shelter\/\">them take shelter in your furniture store<\/a>. But sometimes we have the responsibility to do slower, more intellectual work.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s where <em>Public Discourse<\/em> comes in. Our hope is that you will use fifteen or twenty minutes out of your eight hours of \u201cdoing what you will\u201d to read our articles. Perhaps you might devote a little more time to thinking through their implications and discussing the questions they raise with your friends, colleagues, and family, whether in person or via social media.<\/p>\n<p>It is a privilege to work for <em>Public Discourse<\/em>. If you value the work that we do, please <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/support\/\">donate to <em>Public Discourse<\/em><\/a> today. And, more importantly, please keep reading, sharing, and discussing the ideas you encounter here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Labor Day gives us an important opportunity to reflect not only on the meaning of our work but also on how we choose to spend our leisure time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":621,"featured_media":19998,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"eea749ba-b635-408f-9a1f-d406f20b6994","beyondwords_preview_token":"10dfe1bb-3e03-4def-b4ea-0313afc0dabc","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[721],"class_list":["post-19997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public-discourse"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[621],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - 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Follow her on Substack @SerenaSigillito.","sameAs":["https:\/\/x.com\/SerenaSigillito"],"url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/serena-sigillito\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/621"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19997"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101816,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19997\/revisions\/101816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19997"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101804,"date":"2026-09-02T20:00:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T00:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101804"},"modified":"2026-09-02T11:41:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T15:41:33","slug":"ai-automation-and-the-meaning-of-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101804\/","title":{"rendered":"AI, Automation, and the Meaning of Work\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The technical economic issues and questions surrounding artificial intelligence are myriad. Perhaps the most fundamental set of issues, however, relates to the implications of AI for our work. If AI lives up to the most optimistic forecasts and does at least some of what the most enthusiastic analysts hope it will do, what impact will that have on the human condition here on earth as relates to work?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The relationship between human beings and work is complex. Questions surrounding human labor and its significance turn on basic convictions regarding the nature of the human person. From a Christian theological perspective, the mandate to work is seen as foundational to the biblical account of the creation of human beings, from the rendition of humanity created in the image of God (<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">imago Dei<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) in Genesis 1:26-28 to the specific commands to Adam placed in the garden of Eden to \u201cwork it and keep it\u201d (Gen. 2:15). After man\u2019s fall into sin, the mandate to work continued, albeit in a different context as Adam\u2019s work became toilsome and troublesome. As God relates to Adam in Genesis:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2026 cursed is the ground because of you; <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and you shall eat the plants of the field. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By the sweat of your face <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">you shall eat bread, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">till you return to the ground, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for out of it you were taken; <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for you are dust, <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and to dust you shall return. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(Gen. 3:17-19)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And after the Flood, God\u2019s covenant with Noah reiterates the primal mandate: \u201cBe fruitful and multiply and fill the earth\u201d (Gen. 9:1).<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The doctrine of humanity as created in the image of God relates to the question of the relationship between humanity and work and is likewise contested and complex. But as Ximian Xu <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/9781009642569\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has recently written<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, one of the \u201cconventional interpretations\u201d of the image of God is what he calls the \u201cfunctional\u201d understanding, which sees \u201cthe <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">imago Dei<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as the God-given stewardship that humans assume to achieve certain tasks.\u201d Among these tasks, and according to at least some interpretation of this functional understanding, the creation of human beings in the image of God means that \u201chumans are created to be God\u2019s partners in God\u2019s continuous providential work, contributing to the flourishing of creation.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is a rich and diverse literature <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-94-007-6510-8_118\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">exploring the nature of human work in theological perspective<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which involves both objective and subjective dimensions of work. Pope John Paul II\u2019s encyclical letter <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/john-paul-ii\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091981_laborem-exercens.html\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Laborem exercens<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, for example, distinguishes these two aspects and argues that <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the \u201cimage of God\u201d he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization. As <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a person, man is therefore the subject of work. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process; independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfil the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u201cnew things\u201d represented by digital innovation show the prudence of Pope Leo XIV\u2019s focus on AI in the social teaching of his pontificate. As he has written in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/leo-xiv\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Magnifica humanitas<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cOver the centuries, technological development has significantly improved the living conditions of humanity. At the same time, each phase of progress has also revealed the ambiguity of tools that can cause harm when not oriented toward the good.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This era of transition and change raises anew important questions about the relationship between material betterment, economics, and human development. Given its focus on material prosperity, economics as a discipline and economic history as an undertaking have tended to focus on material causes as well as material consequences of development. In the same way, discourse surrounding human work has tended to focus on the material objects, factors, and outputs of labor. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The earliest records related to work and innovation in the Bible, for instance, tend to focus on the physical and manual features of labor. This makes sense given the level of technological development and the largely agricultural nature of ancient life. Noah\u2019s father Lamech expresses such concerns with his prediction concerning Noah: \u201cOut of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands\u201d (Gen. 5:29). Scripture also relates that Cain founded a city (Gen. 4:17), and that his descendants invented musical instruments (the lyre and pipe, Gen. 4:21) as well as forged tools (of bronze and iron, Gen. 4:22). <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All work has a moral and spiritual as well as material dimension, however, even if Christian reflection on economic realities has at times focused on some aspects over others at various points. The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1938948149\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">describes a theological understanding of human labor well<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In itself work is not a curse but a blessing, no shame but an honor, no compulsion but a calling and privilege. But if work is severed from its moral principle and its moral purpose, it quickly becomes a heavy burden, or a means of indulgence. Presently here on earth, work is paired with difficulty; it must be done in the sweat of one\u2019s brow, not only by the manual laborer who works with his body, but also by the craftsman and the salesman, the teacher and the thinker, who work especially with their mind.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is with those \u201cwho work especially with their mind\u201d that the development of AI technologies brings into sharper focus the dangers and opportunities for tools to either degrade or enhance human dignity as expressed in work. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is not to say that all economic development in human history before the present day has merely been the result of the expansion of the technical, physical power of human beings. Nevertheless, there does seem to be something novel about the ability of AI systems to mimic, complement, or supplant what has typically been assumed to be distinctively human. A hammer extends the reach and concentrates the strength of the human hand. A word processor allows for human thought to be expressed dynamically. An AI agent or large-language model (LLM) running on a computer system shares much with earlier types of software and yet also seems to be qualitatively different. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Adam Smith observed incisively that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/about.libertyfund.org\/books\/an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-2-volume-bundle\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">economic development was made possible by the division of labor<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. His focus was especially on the division of labor between human beings, which allows them to specialize and focus on particular aspects of the industrial production process. But there is another dimension to the division of labor, which has to do with the relationship between human beings and the tools they create and use. Smith famously used the example of a pin factory, noting how \u201cthe way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades.\u201d Focusing especially on the specialization of the laborers, Smith writes, \u201cOne man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head,\u201d and so on. Certainly workers use different tools for drawing, straightening, cutting, pointing, and grinding the pins. But the main emphasis here is on the reality that specialization is something that applies to people. Different people do different tasks, aided by different tools fitted for the particular operation. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smith recognizes this dynamic as he traces the different factors that result in the \u201cgreat increase of the quantity of work, which in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing.\u201d He goes on to elaborate three: \u201cthe increase of dexterity in every particular workman,\u201d as well as \u201cthe saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another,\u201d and finally \u201cthe invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.\u201d In his exposition of this third factor, Smith notes that the specialized worker, who has the direct knowledge of and familiarity with the particular task, is often the one who discovers a method for more efficiently completing the work, whether by adjusting the process in some way, or by applying a tool in a new way or creating a new tool altogether. \u201cA great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided,\u201d he writes, \u201cwere originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alongside the invention of such physical tools by workers intended to \u201cfacilitate and quicken their own particular part of the work,\u201d there have also been inventions that amplify or complement in some way the mental powers of human workers. The first of these might perhaps be considered language and writing itself, but we might also note developments such as the codex, double-entry bookkeeping, analogue calculators of various kinds, and modern computing technologies. Smith was concerned that the specialization resulting from the division of labor might become so granular, particular, and repetitive that it would have serious deleterious effects on the worker: \u201cThe man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur.\u201d The result is that the worker \u201cnaturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>It is with those \u201cwho work especially with their mind\u201d that the development of AI technologies brings into sharper focus the dangers and opportunities for tools to either degrade or enhance human dignity as expressed in work.<\/blockquote><div class='blockquote-share'><span class='s-options'><a class=\"cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_1 cmsmasters-icon-facebook-1 cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=It is with those \u201cwho work especially with their mind\u201d that the development of AI technologies brings into sharper focus the dangers and opportunities for tools to either degrade or enhance human dignity as expressed in work.\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"blockquote_tw cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_3 cmsmasters-icon-twitter cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=It is with those \u201cwho work especially with their mind\u201d that the development of AI technologies brings into sharper focus the dangers and opportunities for tools to either degrade or enhance human dignity as expressed in work.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Smith\u2019s concerns regarding the specialization of laborers in manufacturing settings are shared by many with respect to the impact of AI on human cognition. These concerns also echo the warning about the impact of writing itself on human intelligence related in Plato\u2019s dialogue <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phaedrus<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. At one point in the dialogue, Socrates relates a story to Phaedrus about the invention of writing by the Egyptian god Theuth and his attempt to get the Egyptian king Thamus to adopt the technology. Thamus is skeptical, however, arguing that writing will essentially cause people to become forgetful because they will have outsourced memory to texts. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/euthyphroapology0001plat\/page\/562\/mode\/2up\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As Thamus puts it<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cthis invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.\u201d As <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1493088939\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Joel J. Miller points out<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, however, this criticism seems not to have been fully endorsed by Plato himself. The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Phaedrus <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">account comes to us in written form, and in other dialogues Socrates makes use of writing. Miller argues persuasively that the written codex has had a transformative cultural (and economic) impact through the millennia as this technology allows the stable transmission of knowledge across time and space. While granting the possibility of discontinuity and disruption, Miller concludes that \u201cit\u2019s possible to regard LLMs as part of the idea machine, as an extension of its affordances.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But perhaps Thamus\u2019s criticisms of the written word apply more saliently to digital texts, and particularly those generated by artificial intelligence. This raises the challenge of identifying what, in particular, is actually being offloaded to AI tools and how they might properly be used. As in all things, it is necessary to discern prudent use and to distinguish between proper uses and abuses of such tools. There has been a great deal of research questioning the impact of digital technologies, and particularly AI tools, on human recall and cognition, including, for instance, \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cognitive offloading,\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a term that describes the delegation of mental tasks and processes to digital tools. If the printed codex does not cause forgetfulness in the minds of learners, then perhaps AI tools do. These concerns raise the possibility of human stultification on a scale not anticipated by Smith, arising now not from the repetitiveness of manual tasks, but from the ease and allure of digital tools.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This calls for wisdom. Abuse is no argument against proper use. But AI\u2019s challenges and opportunities are bound up with identifying the scale and scope of proper use as well as the consequences of abuse, and how to distinguish one from another. All of this means that in an age of change, dislocation, and disruption, the cultivation of and habituation to virtue are more important than ever. Work has always been, and will continue to be, a powerful institution for the development of the human person, individually as well as corporately, materially as well as spiritually. As much as the context and content of work may change, this remains a perennial truth. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/young-blonde-woman-teleworking-from-a-modern-home-office-typing-on-a-laptop-and-jotting-notes-in-a-spiral-notebook-focused-and-productive-with-a-coffee-nearby\/2033090636\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">licensed via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abuse is no argument against proper use. But AI\u2019s challenges and opportunities are bound up with identifying the scale and scope of proper use as well as the consequences of abuse, and how to distinguish one from another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":651,"featured_media":101809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"b822ecc0-ff0f-491c-83e2-d5343885197a","beyondwords_preview_token":"99df5914-53a8-48e0-b3df-f93a7459a71e","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[2455,13,2427],"tags":[],"coauthors":[339,2680],"class_list":["post-101804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-education","category-work","pillars-education-and-culture"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,651],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>AI, Automation, and the Meaning of Work\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Abuse is no argument against proper use. But AI\u2019s challenges and opportunities are bound up with identifying the scale and scope of proper use as well as the consequences of abuse, and how to distinguish one from another.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101804\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jordan J. Ballor, Erik W. 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Ballor (Dr. theol., Ph.D.) is executive director at First Liberty's Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy and a senior research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.","sameAs":["https:\/\/x.com\/jordanballor"],"url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/jordan-j-ballor\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/651"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101804"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101806,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101804\/revisions\/101806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101804"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101789,"date":"2026-09-01T20:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T00:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101789"},"modified":"2026-08-31T14:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:08:17","slug":"e-pluribus-unum-yesterday-and-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101789\/","title":{"rendered":"<i>E Pluribus Unum<\/i>, Yesterday and Today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pope John Paul II once <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.firstthings.com\/article\/1998\/04\/john-paul-ii-on-the-american-experiment\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">said<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: \u201cthe continuing success of American democracy depends on the degree to which each new generation \u2026 makes its own the moral truths on which the Founding Fathers staked the future of [the] Republic.\u201d One of those truths is that, through virtue and law, national unity can coexist with local diversity: public order and private freedom are not enemies. \u201c<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">E pluribus unum<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d as the currency says: out of many, one people can come to be. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two hundred and fifty years on, this American ideal of pluralism might seem to be in crisis. The diversity of American politics has decayed into division. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.timesofisrael.com\/a-response-to-nick-fuentess-claims-about-jews-and-israel\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> suggest that certain ethnic groups or religions threaten the American order. Many <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2023\/05\/88691\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">secular progressives<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> cannot tolerate people with conservative religious views. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Once-Future-Liberal-Identity-Politics\/dp\/0062697439\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> worry that America is growing irreparably fragmented along ideological and economic lines.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However things stand in fact, America did maintain a functioning and admirable pluralistic society for more than two centuries, and in many respects it still does. If we want to revive that society today, we must remember how and why it worked in its heyday.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A New Order for the Ages<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As John Jay <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/18th_century\/fed02.asp\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">pointed out<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Federalist<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">America\u2019s original colonists had much in common: the English language, English political culture, and English Protestantism, among other things. And yet, as David Hackett Fischer showed in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultural\/dp\/0195069056\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Albion\u2019s Seed<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Americans were also highly diverse.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New England Puritans, formed in Calvinism, stressed that freedom had to be ordered toward truth lest it devolve into license. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2024\/05\/95005\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The aristocrats of eastern Virginia<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> thought freedom could only exist within a firm social hierarchy, like that of their Anglican church: a person had maximum freedom within his station, provided he always deferred to his superiors. The poor but enthusiastic Presbyterians from the border of England and Scotland (and from Northern Ireland, hence the term \u201cScots-Irish\u201d) went to Appalachia to escape their domineering Anglican overlords; in the American backcountry they built a society around the idea that each man, no matter how humble his station, deserved to be free, because he was made in God\u2019s image. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2025\/03\/97308\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The peaceful Quakers<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, having suffered religious persecution in England\u2014and being strongly devoted to Jesus\u2019s command to \u201cDo unto others as you would have them do unto you\u201d\u2014created in the Delaware Valley a society where citizens respected each other\u2019s freedom to follow their conscience, especially in religion: no state power could make anyone believe supernatural truths, they thought.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">None of these groups could have flourished on its own, not only because each was too small to defend and provide for itself, but because they all had weaknesses. The Puritans\u2019 regard for truth could become excessive, forbidding dissent even on matters of revelation (as their ideological descendants, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lawandreligionforum.org\/2016\/08\/09\/conversations-r-r-reno\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">modern progressives<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, do in matters of politics). The aristocratic Anglicans of the South denied the universal dignity of human beings and, infamously, established an oppressive slave-based economy. The Scots-Irish could love freedom to the point of violence, as in the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s (among the first of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/today-in-history\/April-2-The-Story-of-the-Richmond-Bread-Riot\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">many<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> American <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/world\/factbox-bombings-shootings-beatings-us-capitols-history-of-violence-idUSKBN29D03F\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">uprisings<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">). The Quakers were admirably charitable, but their pacifism made them sitting ducks to military invaders.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Together, however, these groups throve. Puritan ordered liberty gave America the rule of law, which tempered the Appalachians\u2019 rowdiness. Appalachians\u2019 love of \u201cnatural liberty\u201d inspired Patrick Henry (son of an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopediavirginia.org\/entries\/henry-patrick-1736-1799\/#:~:text=His%20father%2C%20John%20Henry%2C%20was,that%20law%20which%20warrants%20slavery.%E2%80%9D\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Appalachian mother<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) and others to agitate for the Bill of Rights and stress the limits of the federal government\u2019s power. The Quakers\u2019 love of neighbor gave rise to America\u2019s tradition of religious liberty and the abolition movement, ending slavery in the South and across the globe. Southerners\u2019 military and political leadership protected the Quakers (and all Americans) in the War of Independence (in men like George Washington) and the whole free world in World War II (in men like Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall). Together Americans came to respect both the rights of the person and the demands of the common good, united by their belief in a reasonable God who <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/founding-docs\/declaration-transcript\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">created all men equal<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in his image.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each subculture\u2019s strengths made up for the others\u2019 weaknesses, leaving each freer to \u201cbe itself.\u201d <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/18th_century\/fed09.asp\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alexander Hamilton<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/avalon.law.yale.edu\/18th_century\/fed10.asp\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">James Madison<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> were surely inspired by this balance of cultures when they devised the U.S. Constitution\u2019s system of political checks and balances. America\u2019s diverse subcultures formed, in Fischer\u2019s words, \u201ca culture of freedom which is more open and expansive\u201d\u2014and therefore more durable\u2014\u201cthan any unitary tradition alone could possibly be.\u201d It was a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">novus ordo seclorum<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201ca new order of the ages\u201d: a polity, with little precedent in history, that struck a middle ground between the expanding, homogenizing tendency of empire and the city-state\u2019s love for local customs and freedom. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And yet not so far into America\u2019s history, this admirable order came crashing down in the Civil War. Was pluralism itself to blame? Was it a quixotic ideal, doomed from the start? Thoughtful observers have suggested it was not. The problem of early America more probably lay in one flaw that all America\u2019s subcultures happened to share, and that went uncorrected.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A Mania for Independence<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In his book <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hold-These-Truths-Reflections-Proposition\/dp\/0742549011\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We Hold These Truths<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> John Courtney Murray, a Catholic writing in the 1960s, commended the Declaration of Independence in which the Protestant Founding Fathers (representing all of America\u2019s cultural regions) correctly grounded freedom in \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/founding-docs\/declaration-transcript\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Laws of Nature and of Nature\u2019s God<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d which they took to be \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/06\/101310\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">self-evident<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d to human reason. But Murray also noted that the Declaration\u2019s principles contradicted an element of the Founders\u2019 classical Protestant theology, which <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ignatius.com\/the-spirit-and-forms-of-protestantism-sfocp\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Louis Bouyer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.staugustine.net\/9781587315176\/morality\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Servais Pinckaers<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have explored in greater depth. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many Protestants, beginning with Martin Luther, shared William of Ockham\u2019s belief that God created the world from an act of love so free that it was, in the end, unintelligible to reason; otherwise one might suggest that God <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">had <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to create the world, involuntarily (not out of love), as a necessary outgrowth of his nature. From man\u2019s perspective, the law by which God made the world must be arbitrary. Protestants were nevertheless confident that God\u2019s law would not change, because God had promised as much by biblical revelation; but that promise could be accepted <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">only<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by faith, not also by reason.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over time, this belief in the radical separation between the laws of faith and the laws of human reason slowly conditioned American legal theorists to think that the essence of even human law was not reason but <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">only<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the will of the sovereign. Under the influence of this <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nlnrac.org\/critics\/legal-positivism.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">legal positivism<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it became easier for people to believe, and act, as though power, not truth, were the cornerstone of society. Hence the common good came to be determined less by mutual persuasion among reasonable beings than by the competition for power. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Alexis de Tocqueville <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/D\/bo3612682.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">foresaw<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the consequences of such views on his trip to America in the early 1830s. He concluded that Protestantism\u2019s notion of freedom errs toward anarchy, \u201cbring[ing] men much less to equality\u201d (the \u201cprimary fact\u201d on which democracy depends) \u201cthan to independence.\u201d If God is not bound by rules, it is hard to argue that anyone else is. Tocqueville worried that, over time, Americans\u2019 excessive, antinomian love of independence would erode the civic friendship that must hold democracy together. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not long after Tocqueville\u2019s visit, such dysfunction started to manifest itself. In the Civil War, Southern slaveholders insisted on being free of the federal government; then they were defeated not just for lack of material resources, but for their inability to cooperate in the demanding enterprise of war (as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/253141\/robert-e-lee-by-allen-c-guelzo\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robert E. Lee<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> recognized). In the North, antinomianism fostered the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/topic\/anarchism\/Anarchism-in-the-Americas\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">anarchism<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of American <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/event\/Transcendentalism-American-movement\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">transcendentalists<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the greed of Gilded Age robber barons. Then early twentieth-century <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nlnrac.org\/critics\/american-progressivism.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">progressives<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (heirs of the Puritan spirit) went to opposite extremes: they reined in chaotic capitalism by erecting an administrative state in great measure unanswerable to the people. Lacking understanding of how properly to harmonize freedom with order, they too eroded the rule of law and self-government, by transgressing the Constitution\u2019s wise limitations on federal power. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Reason and Equality: Catholic Contributions to America<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But despite the calamities of the nineteenth century, the twentieth century witnessed many American successes: the revival of devotion to the Constitution, especially within the conservative movement; the triumph of American democracy over fascist and communist dictatorships; and the final legal emancipation of the descendants of Southern slaves. How did America reunite to achieve such feats? If Fischer\u2019s and Murray\u2019s analyses are correct, perhaps the answer is that a new cultural element was introduced into the American mix: one similar enough to the pre-existing ones to blend in, but that had new insights and strengths to correct America\u2019s antinomian tendency. A likely candidate for that role was the Catholic culture of the immigrants who, having begun to come to America before the Civil War, poured in all the more after.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Catholics shared with Protestants many basic Christian beliefs, including in the natural law; but Catholic theology emphasized more clearly that, although God\u2019s reason is not reducible to man\u2019s, it is in harmony with it. Lacking Luther\u2019s Ockhamism, Catholics accepted more firmly that God, as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=John%201&version=RSV\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Gospel of John<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> says, is the \u201cWord\u201d or \u201cReason\u201d through which \u201call things,\u201d including human nature, \u201cwere made.\u201d God\u2019s law, \u201cwritten on the heart\u201d of men\u2019s nature, as Paul <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Romans%202%3A14-16&version=RSV\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">said<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, is therefore fashioned after God\u2019s nature: for God to violate reason\u2014to command one to break the natural law\u2014would be as meaningless as a square circle; it would be inconsistent with who God is.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Catholic cultural mores could also rein in Protestantism\u2019s excessive love of independence, reconciling personal freedom with national unity. The Catholic Church fostered the feeling of equality among its members by its liturgy and doctrinal discipline. Within it, Tocqueville observed, \u201call classes of society\u201d were \u201cintermingled \u2026 at the foot of the same altar, \u2026 [and] in the eyes of God.\u201d Learned and ignorant, rich and poor, powerful and weak: all believed the same dogmas and followed the same moral code. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">History provides evidence that these beliefs and customs did in fact move Catholics to improve America. After the Civil War, American Catholic schools and other institutions (like those founded by <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt14351082\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Frances Xavier Cabrini<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) integrated millions of immigrants into American society, giving them not only the skills and virtues to succeed, but a sense of dignity and equality with their fellow citizens. Whole Catholic orders (like that founded by <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.philanthropyroundtable.org\/hall-of-fame\/st-katharine-drexel\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Katharine Drexel<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) dedicated themselves to helping former slaves and their descendants, such as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncregister.com\/news\/justice-clarence-thomas-sept-25-talk\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Clarence Thomas<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, integrate into American life. Catholics such as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/hesburgh.nd.edu\/fr-teds-life\/champion-of-civil-rights\/civil-rights-commission\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Theodore Hesburgh<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> were at the front lines of the civil rights movement; Catholics have been at the forefront of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/catholicreview.org\/how-the-catholic-church-influenced-the-pro-life-movement-before-and-after-roe\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the pro-life cause<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Catholics like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2019\/01\/48442\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Richard John Neuhaus<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2015\/06\/15163\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">William Buckley<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/robertpgeorge.com\/articles\/remembering-robert-casey\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Robert Casey, Sr.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2016\/02\/16478\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Antonin Scalia<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> led movements in journalism, politics, and jurisprudence to reground America in its founding natural-law principles. They brought a new vitality to American civic life by learning from the cultures of America\u2019s early years and contributing their own culture\u2019s insights.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Catholic culture had failures, too. The nuns who taught Clarence Thomas radiated love for all their students, regardless of the color of their skin; but many public Catholic leaders acquiesced in racism (hence why Thomas <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncregister.com\/news\/justice-clarence-thomas-sept-25-talk\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">left the Church<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for many years). Once they became comfortably integrated into America, many Catholics abandoned natural law morality, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/short-reads\/2014\/10\/03\/vatican-synod-on-family-highlights-discord-between-church-teachings-and-u-s-catholics-views-2\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">especially in sexual matters<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; had more Catholics been devoted to sexual integrity, America\u2019s wider sexual revolution, and the cultural devastation it wrought, might have been avoided or mitigated. Historically many Catholics <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Postliberalism-Failed-James-Patterson-ebook\/dp\/B0H1JYG5FG\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">condoned<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the use of civil coercion to enforce supernatural laws. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2025\/03\/97308\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Protestant America<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> reminded Catholic Americans of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2025\/08\/98719\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the value of religious freedom<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a lesson that spread to the whole Catholic Church: it was the American John Courtney Murray who drafted the Second Vatican Council\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/archive\/hist_councils\/ii_vatican_council\/documents\/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">doctrinal statement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the topic.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A New Birth for America Today<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">American pluralism is not perfect, but for two hundred fifty years it has held together diverse cultural groups\u2014Protestants, Catholics, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ideas.tikvah.org\/collections\/america-250\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jews<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; Europeans, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonandschuster.com\/books\/African-Founders\/David-Hackett-Fischer\/9781982145095\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Africans<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and more. America\u2019s diversity and unity are not incompatible, but they require dedicated work. Contemporary Americans must recommit to the traditions of their own subcultures, and consider what more they could do to strengthen their nation\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">novus ordo seclorum<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which has achieved much good for its citizens and for the world. America may also need contributions from new subcultures: Indian immigrants, for instance, with their culture\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ifstudies.org\/blog\/the-indian-american-dream-by-putting-family-and-education-first-indian-americans-rise\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">strong devotion to the family<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, may have an important role to play in correcting <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2025\/06\/98187\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">contemporary America\u2019s sexual license<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rather than abandoning the American project of order and freedom, let us strive to give it \u201cnew birth,\u201d as Abraham Lincoln <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abrahamlincolnonline.org\/lincoln\/speeches\/gettysburg.htm\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">said<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> during the Civil War, so \u201cthat government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/great-seal-macro\/58589767\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If America\u2019s unity frays, the problem is probably not its diversity, but that America needs its many cultural groups\u2014and perhaps new ones\u2014to contribute more of their special strengths to public life.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":875,"featured_media":101793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"5f501bcb-0b97-488f-a2c5-3ab0bf4a1492","beyondwords_preview_token":"ea0a373d-dc67-4b6e-91d0-97638ed134a2","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[2644,198,1192,11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[713],"class_list":["post-101789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-250th","category-american-founding","category-catholicism","category-culture","pillars-education-and-culture"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,875],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>E Pluribus Unum, Yesterday and Today - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If America\u2019s unity frays, the problem is probably not its diversity, but that America needs its many cultural groups\u2014and perhaps new ones\u2014to contribute more of their special strengths to public life.\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/09\/101789\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John F. 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Once bans are viewed through that lens, federal and state legislatures in the United States take on a much broader constitutional authority to protect children in their \u201ctraditional social environment\u201d online than many First Amendment debates would suggest.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>From Content to Design: The Changing Landscape of Legal and Theoretical Arguments <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In March, a California jury <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/us\/jury-finds-meta-google-liable-in-social-media-addiction-trial-5998723?utm_source=RTNews&src_src=RTNews&utm_campaign=rtbreaking-2026-03-25-5&src_cmp=rtbreaking-2026-03-25-5&utm_medium=email&est=51KCRoG%2Ft%2FkwYjcY6MchGhhPSEe7g964Cn%2BxuxAPc4emjgnbTeOrYf%2BUbb3RisX2VtY%3D\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">found<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Meta and Google jointly liable (with a 70\u201330 split) in a social media <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/393\/bmj.s798\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">addiction<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> trial awarding six million dollars to the plaintiff, twenty-year-old K. G. M. Her testimony suggested that her use of YouTube and Instagram since ages six and nine respectively (sometimes, for up to sixteen hours a day) led to anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, and other disorders.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But this is just one of the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/the-world-in-brief\/2026\/08\/18\/03f172e7-9ed8-448a-b47c-b8952bf9583c\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">many cases currently unfolding in courts<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Such an approach has prompted American legislators to argue that addictive platform design justifies age-based restrictions similar to those for other products that pose significant public-health risks. Current federal initiatives like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/119th-congress\/senate-bill\/278\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KOSMA<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/congressional-record\/congressional-record-index\/118th-congress\/2nd-session\/stop-the-scroll-act\/1921600\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stop the Scroll Act<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> serve this purpose, as well as the many state proposals and laws already adopted, e.g., in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flsenate.gov\/Session\/Bill\/2024\/00003\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Florida<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/leginfo.legislature.ca.gov\/faces\/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1709\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">California<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ilga.gov\/legislation\/BillStatus?DocNum=4046&DocTypeID=SB&GAID=18&LegId=167639&sessionid=114\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Illinois<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, or <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/webserver.rilegislature.gov\/BillText26\/HouseText26\/H7953.htm\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rhode Island,<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to regulate children\u2019s use of these platforms.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Ethics and Public Policy Center\u2019s Clare Morell aptly <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/opinion\/big-techs-tobacco-moment-here-truth-about-harming-kids-out\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">wrote<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that recent big tech cases have shifted from content to product design features, and consequently, big tech is facing its \u201ctobacco moment\u201d born out of the following question (as Morell put it): \u201cDid these companies negligently design and market a highly addictive product to children and did they know\u2014and fail to warn users\u2014that their products cause harms to minors?\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I would argue that the better question is whether the companies themselves create a harmful and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Tech-Exit-Practical-Freeing-Smartphones\/dp\/059373629X\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">unhealthy social environment for children.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Other nations have attempted to answer this question. Most notably, French legislators <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/07\/21\/world\/france-becomes-the-first-eu-country-to-ban-social-media-for-children\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">adopted a nationwide social media ban for kids a few weeks ago, becoming the first European country to do so; they<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> set the age of \u201cdigital majority\u201d for children at fifteen years. The law argues that children as a protected class are too young to access social media networks. It provides a broad, platform-neutral scope, framing the introduction of digital majority as a public health necessity to aid children\u2019s civic development. The controversial nature of any such legislation is demonstrated by the French Constitutional Council\u2019s August 14th <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr\/decision\/2026\/2026911DC.htm\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">decision<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to declare the law unconstitutional by, among other things, introducing unnecessary age verification requirements for people over the age of digital majority without necessary data privacy safeguards.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The French public health narrative is reminiscent of Hungarian law. At the turn of the millennium, the Hungarian Constitutional Court introduced a prohibition on tobacco ads in national media, holding that that the right to health, just as the right to a healthy environment, serves the wellbeing of our future generations. The court argued that public health considerations justify prohibitions that promote the welfare of the protected population. In addition, in a 2021 immigration case, the same Court presented the idea that in protecting human dignity, the state needs to protect the \u201ctraditional social environment of individuals\u201d as one that \u201cdefines the development of one\u2019s personality, the direction and frames of their identity and as such needs to be considered within the bounds of the quality of human life.\u201d (I shall use the adjective \u201ctraditional\u201d to refer to the ordinary interpersonal environment in which people grow and develop.)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Against this background, an assessment of the legal, policy, and theoretical landscape surrounding this topic in the United States is timely. Applying the two (French and Hungarian) approaches to shape present American debates on product liability and legislative bans is useful for two reasons. First, it may provide both federal and state legislatures with additional reasons to enable or exercise police powers supported by common-good considerations. (The U.S. constitutional law doctrine of police powers refers to the states\u2019 general legislative authority to regulate health, safety, welfare, and public order\u2014powers the federal government does not possess in the same general form.) Second, they point to the necessity of enacting effective consumer and child protection regimes that shield the \u201ctraditional social environment\u201d of children online, rolling back some attention-driven and engagement-focused platform features that are addictive and that endanger younger generations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other words, the current modus operandi of social media is harmful to the development of children\u2019s \u201ctraditional social environment\u201d online, which was healthy before creative destruction brought about unintended consequences.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A possible counterargument could be that it is hard to define the \u201ctraditional\u201d social environment online, especially in the social media context. But sociological literature has already described the evolution of important differences in kind, e.g., from traditional, asynchronous methods of mass communication to synchronous methods, resulting in the increasing prevalence of social media in recent years.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The concept of a \u201ctraditional social media environment\u201d should be understood relatively rather than absolutely. I do not mean an idealized or nostalgic vision of social life online. Rather, \u201ctraditional\u201d means the prevailing communicative ecology in which children\u2019s personality, identity, and social relationships develop at a given historical moment (as a baseline). Scholars like Manuel Castells in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Rise of the Network Society <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have long described successive transitions\u2014from one-way mass media to participatory social media. As communication technologies have evolved over time\u2014from broadcast media to networked social media and now to AI-mediated interaction\u2014that baseline itself changes. My argument is that generative AI represents a qualitative break in that evolution, making the pre-AI platform ecosystem the relevant \u201ctraditional\u201d baseline for contemporary constitutional analysis.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A great example is the harm AI influencers cause to the healthy development of one\u2019s personality and identity, and to the \u201ctraditional social environment\u201d itself. There is evidence that their emergence affects children\u2019s socialization, mental health, and identity formation, distorting their traditional social environment online. Because if children\u2019s socialization happens primarily online, then how \u201ctraditional\u201d can it really be? If they interact more and more with AI entities <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/constitutionaldiscourse.com\/the-boundaries-of-virtual-influencers-ai-generated-instagram-accounts-in-the-context-of-the-eu\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that express feelings and personalities and communicate opinions<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and yet are not human but can only be distinguished from actual humans with great difficulty even by an adult, what is this doing to children\u2019s social development?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In terms of the current modus operandi of the platforms, we also need to look at children as captive audiences. By product design, they are the main targets in terms of advertising and potential future purchasing power, and they are <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic\/dp\/0593655036\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">uniquely vulnerable<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Unlike newspapers, television, or even the early internet, algorithmic platforms continually adapt to the user\u2019s behaviors and preferences, reducing the practical significance of the user\u2019s theoretical freedom to leave.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">AI-driven advertising captivates users through algorithmically tailored content; it feeds viewers content based on their former searches (i.e., their taste profile). Children may be particularly vulnerable to exposure to harmful content, as evidenced by cases like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/law.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/appellate-courts\/ca3\/22-3061\/22-3061-2024-08-27.html\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anderson <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> TikTok,<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which resulted from the tragic death of ten-year-old Nyla Anderson due to an AI-recommended \u201cblackout challenge.\u201d Her parents sued TikTok for, among other things, negligence and products liability, alleging that TikTok knowingly allowed such videos and affirmatively recommended them to minors through its algorithm. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As this case suggests, AI has unforeseen capabilities in learning and adapting to user preferences, which can reinforce engagement with specific\u2014often unlawful and harmful\u2014content. Thus, the central issue in litigation is no longer merely content, but the design choices that amplify exposure to it.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When advertising is directed toward specific audiences looking at specific desired content, non-skippable video ads appear for specific groups of users. In other words, while trying to access content relevant to their filter bubbles, these groups become captive audiences of such AI-driven, recommended advertising. Once the platform becomes aware of their preferences, children can\u2019t escape content directly marketed to them under their taste profiles. Even though they might be able to delete the app, they most often will not, as they are driven by a need to participate in the discourse (driven by the fear of missing out\u2014\u201cFOMO\u201d\u2014and the network effect) in their respective groups. They become a captive audience, because if they leave, they miss out on information they think might be vital to their socialization. There is nothing \u201ctraditional\u201d about this environment.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>AI has unforeseen capabilities in adapting to user preferences, which can reinforce engagement with specific\u2014often harmful\u2014content. Thus, the central issue in litigation is no longer merely content, but the design choices that amplify exposure to it.<\/blockquote><div class='blockquote-share'><span class='s-options'><a class=\"cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_1 cmsmasters-icon-facebook-1 cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=AI has unforeseen capabilities in adapting to user preferences, which can reinforce engagement with specific\u2014often harmful\u2014content. Thus, the central issue in litigation is no longer merely content, but the design choices that amplify exposure to it.\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"blockquote_tw cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_3 cmsmasters-icon-twitter cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=AI has unforeseen capabilities in adapting to user preferences, which can reinforce engagement with specific\u2014often harmful\u2014content. Thus, the central issue in litigation is no longer merely content, but the design choices that amplify exposure to it.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To many children, social media platforms function as their traditional social environment, as a place where they can express themselves. Children should have, in the online world, the protections afforded them in physical public spaces. There should be certain \u201cplaces\u201d where children can avoid offensive speech; but if there cannot be any, then prohibitive rationales will emerge, arguing for bans on social media to enable children to avoid this problem altogether. Different child-protective and public health or welfare rationales support these arguments, elaborated\u2014in the context of the First Amendment\u2014in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/321\/158\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prince <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Massachusetts<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which held that \u201cIt is the interest of youth itself, and of the whole community, that children be both safeguarded from abuses and given opportunities for growth.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>From Scanning to Banning: The Changing Landscape of Policy and Legislation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fedsoc.org\/events\/anderson-v-tiktok-limiting-liability-immunity-for-social-media-companies\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Debates<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about content moderation (under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act) persist in the United States, but the \u201ccaptive audience\u201d angle remains unexplored. As someone who was educated under a different free-speech doctrine in Europe, I find this inquiry worthwhile because creative destruction also requires the adaptation of established mechanisms (as well as doctrines) to new contexts. Also, this doctrine may serve as a foundational rationale when framing social media bans for kids. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is now up to the American courts and legislators to create solutions that balance constitutional liberties with the need to protect children from preventable tragedies. The first judicial and legislative solutions are just now being tried in the court of public opinion and in actual courts as well.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whether courts will ultimately uphold social media restrictions remains uncertain. What is already becoming clear, however, is that the constitutional conversation is changing. As litigation increasingly treats social media platforms as products rather than merely speakers, debates once dominated by content moderation may increasingly turn on product design, public health, and the state\u2019s traditional responsibility to protect children. If that transition continues, Big Tech\u2019s \u201ctobacco moment\u201d will prove to be more than a metaphor\u2014it will mark a constitutional realignment, as justifications for regulating social media seem to migrate from the First Amendment toward police powers, product liability, and public health laws.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/upset-teenage-boy-using-mobile-phone-at-home\/2163334070\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is up to American courts and legislators to create solutions that balance constitutional liberties with the need to protect children from preventable tragedies. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2711,"featured_media":101784,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"2bf9b9b9-a77a-4152-b274-bbc1ceb56a58","beyondwords_preview_token":"c780f4a3-ced9-4654-ad40-68702125ac37","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1197,12,593],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2679],"class_list":["post-101777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism","category-economics","category-technology","pillars-business-and-economics"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,2711],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It is up to American courts and legislators to create solutions that balance constitutional liberties with the need to protect children from preventable tragedies.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"M\u00e1rton Sulyok\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101777\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101777\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"M\u00e1rton Sulyok\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f1b1a4bcce327bf0776e6759fccf0b82\"},\"headline\":\"The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-09-01T00:00:11+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101777\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1810,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101777\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/AdobeStock_2163334070.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Capitalism\",\"Economics\",\"Technology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101777\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101777\\\/\",\"name\":\"The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0 - 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His scholarship explores American and comparative constitutional law, constitutional interpretation, freedom of speech at the intersection of law and technology, constitutional identity, and civic education. His recent work examines the institutional and cultural foundations of constitutional democracy, with particular attention to constitutional preambles, constitutional vitality, and the role of civic formation in sustaining free societies.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/author\\\/marton-sulyok\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0 - Public Discourse","description":"It is up to American courts and legislators to create solutions that balance constitutional liberties with the need to protect children from preventable tragedies.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"M\u00e1rton Sulyok","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/"},"author":{"name":"M\u00e1rton Sulyok","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f1b1a4bcce327bf0776e6759fccf0b82"},"headline":"The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0","datePublished":"2026-09-01T00:00:11+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/"},"wordCount":1810,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_2163334070.jpg","articleSection":["Capitalism","Economics","Technology"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/","name":"The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0 - Public Discourse","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_2163334070.jpg","datePublished":"2026-09-01T00:00:11+00:00","description":"It is up to American courts and legislators to create solutions that balance constitutional liberties with the need to protect children from preventable tragedies.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_2163334070.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_2163334070.jpg","width":1400,"height":934,"caption":"child using social media apps"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101777\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Origins and Consequences of Big Tech\u2019s \u201cTobacco Moment\u201d \u00a0"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/","name":"Public Discourse","description":"The online journal of The Witherspoon Institute","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#organization","name":"Public Discourse","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/WIS-PD-AltLogo-FULL-Website.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/WIS-PD-AltLogo-FULL-Website.png","width":524,"height":179,"caption":"Public Discourse"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PublicDiscourse\/","https:\/\/x.com\/PublicDiscourse"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#\/schema\/person\/f1b1a4bcce327bf0776e6759fccf0b82","name":"M\u00e1rton Sulyok","description":"M\u00e1rton Sulyok is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Hungary Foundation in Washington D.C., after having spent two years with the Georgetown Center for the Constitution as a Visiting Researcher. His scholarship explores American and comparative constitutional law, constitutional interpretation, freedom of speech at the intersection of law and technology, constitutional identity, and civic education. His recent work examines the institutional and cultural foundations of constitutional democracy, with particular attention to constitutional preambles, constitutional vitality, and the role of civic formation in sustaining free societies.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/marton-sulyok\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101777"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101783,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101777\/revisions\/101783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101777"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101769,"date":"2026-08-30T20:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101769"},"modified":"2026-08-28T12:01:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T16:01:14","slug":"todays-dating-app-users-arent-happy-technology-is-not-our-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101769\/","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Dating App Users Aren\u2019t Happy. Technology Is Not Our Problem. \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Studies suggest that almost half of American young adults ages 18\u201329 have used a dating app. When millennials are included in this cohort, the slightly smaller percentage still encompasses <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ssrs.com\/insights\/the-public-and-online-dating-in-2025\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">more than a third of the population<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In other words, well over half of currently unmarried people know how dating apps work, which ones to pick when looking for lasting love (versus hookups), and above all, how rarely their use has made them happier. Hand in hand with the familiarity of dating apps goes the host of issues and dissatisfaction that they cause. A question worth asking, then, is whether abandoning the apps would solve our dating problems. Would in-person encounters make dating easier and lead to successful relationships more often? <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sadly, my answer is no. Our dating problem has much deeper roots, resting on an impoverished understanding of the person and of human relationships and on a mistaken conception of our freedom in choosing love. This is what single people bring to the table today\u2014even when they meet in real life. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101689\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My recent interviews with local unmarried young adults in Austin, Texas, confirmed both findings<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: widespread use of the apps, on one hand, and profound and well-grounded criticism of the new medium, on the other. Besides their low success rate\u2014our interviewees were all single people, after all\u2014both men and women expressed serious concerns about how the apps objectify their users. \u201cSwiping\u201d potential partners as one does with Amazon products, they thought, is not a great way to approach a human relationship. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a healthy tool to present so many options. On top of that, it sort of dehumanizes people,\u201d a young man said, echoed by a twenty-four-year-old woman: \u201cI think that they\u2019re increasingly bad for your mental health.\u201d Both sexes were aware, moreover, of how the illusion of infinite choice may be messing with their minds, impairing their willingness or ability to commit\u2014something psychologists have pointed out over the years. \u201cWe feel like there are so many options, but there is no one in reality. You speak to so many people online, but none of it really materializes. And there\u2019s so much distrust,\u201d a young woman told us. \u201cI don\u2019t like it. I don\u2019t like how it just creates this perception that there are so many options.\u201d In the words of a thirty-year-old bachelor determined to settle down, \u201cI think [online dating] probably makes me feel more needy, like you need validation, because it feels like you\u2019ve been rejected so many times.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Men, indeed, report systemic problems too. Several interviewees mentioned the dating apps\u2019 sex biases,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">pointing to<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">how they <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/x3lypVnJ0HM?si=96yvdATa_YJjOqGc\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">favor women<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To some extent, they\u2019re right. Across all platforms, the percentage of males tends to be higher than that of females, thus skewing the game from the start. Furthermore, while men cast their nets widely, liking a wide range of women, the gentler sex <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=25201689\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is much pickier<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. As a result, only a minority of men (10 to 15 percent) receive most of the women\u2019s replies or direct approaches, leaving all others not only unmatched, but also susceptible to despair. Failure in the dating app world usually leads to lower levels of confidence, decreasing self-esteem, and sometimes even depression. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To say that these mechanisms <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">favor <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">females, however, is quite deceiving. While inundated by likes and first approaches, these overstimulated women are seldom liked for who they truly are: men click on attractive pictures, not on interesting bios or shared values. Vulgarity comes next, with explicit messages (or images) being much more easily shared over online platforms than in public. Women\u2019s safety is also in question, with the risk of running into fake profiles and of sharing private information with scammers determined to take advantage of these women\u2019s weaknesses and romantic dreams. Some commentators suggest that, ultimately, it is the same small percentage of women who will end up pairing with someone compatible. If that is true\u2014as my anecdotal single friends\u2019 evidence overwhelmingly suggests\u2014the majority of the population will simply have wasted a lot of time trying to get there.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Dating App Trap <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To make matters worse, a <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">recent analysis<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> revealed that the underlying reasons to be online are often different from those declared. People genuinely looking for a stable relationship may still end up scrolling profiles merely to escape boredom or to boost their confidence.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of our interviewees admitted doing so: \u201cI got the attention I wanted, and it made me feel like a little less alone or like more wanted.\u201d Across all apps, this phenomenon affects both men and women, inevitably contributing to the users\u2019 frustration, confusion, and dissatisfaction. \u201cThey are awful,\u201d a young man told us. Another commented, \u201cIt is a trap.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to recent statistics, \u201ctrap\u201d may be the right term. The success rate of dating apps, measured by the percentage of initial dates that turn into relationships, is currently reported to be <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.breakthecycle.org\/percentage-of-relationships-that-start-online\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">around 12 percent<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The amount of time and effort to get there is quite significant (70\u2013100 matches before even getting to a date). What \u201csuccess\u201d means, moreover, remains unclear too. Is it a month, a year, or a lifetime? And will it be marriage, cohabitation, or an open relationship? Nobody knows; dating apps are not old enough for there to be sufficient data. A somewhat popular belief is that people who meet online divorce less, but this kind of broad statement is hard to verify. \u201cThe evidence is too inconsistent,\u201d Claude, the AI tool, tells us. According to a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/marriagefoundation.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/MF-Risk-of-online-weddings-v6.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">British study<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, especially in the first three years of marriage, couples who met through apps seem to show <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">higher <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">rates of divorce. While this was an isolated report, the explanation seems quite reasonable: people who meet online rather than through mutual friends or family, or environmental connections, are relative strangers to each other. A few years may be just what they need to discover they were not a match. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At that point, some may stick together still: because they found their longed-for soulmate or, brutally, because they dread the idea of experiencing the 100-matches-saga again. If they do go through the process again, dating app users know things about themselves that our grandparents never even considered (try asking your grandmother about her \u201cdealbreakers\u201d). Yet, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">they<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> married young and stayed married. We don\u2019t. Based on our interview data, the number of people who repeat the cycle is significant: several reported relationships that started off on the apps, lasting longer than a few weeks or months. Except for one engaged man and a woman postponing-but-considering engagement, these app-based encounters all ended. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unsurprisingly, then, nobody likes dating apps. The allegedly \u201cfavored\u201d women say that they mostly increased their likelihood of engaging in casual sex, not of finding love. \u201cPeople match you based on your facial features or like a couple of sentences you wrote,\u201d one told us. A graduate student said: \u201cMost of the time it ends up being an invite to someone\u2019s place, ending up in sexual intercourse.\u201d A same-sex attracted woman, who finds it helpful to select other lesbian women via the app\u2019s filters, similarly commented: \u201cMany of my experiences on the dating app have not progressed into romantic relationships.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Are We \u201cChoosing\u201d to Love?\u00a0 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the women quoted above made a very reasonable claim: \u201cIn the end we all want the same thing, which is love and [to] feel like we … [belong] somewhere.\u201d I think this is true. No matter how great the current enmity between the sexes, this is what my friends and acquaintances all want. But if this is the case, if both men and women still ultimately want to love and be loved and to belong to someone, why do we keep using a system that does not work? And, as suggested above, could it be that the system really isn\u2019t the problem? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In more conservative circles, some are convinced that the apps <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the problem, and so they increasingly attempt meeting other singles organically through church groups, book clubs, and other community events. But the results, even of these, are underwhelming. We may still lack data on this, but we do have local evidence. In the Catholic Diocese of Austin, for example, the number of young adults looking for a spouse is significant. Yet, even within that Catholic cohort, which organizes weekly meetups, marriages are very, very few.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Technology, I argue, is not our problem. Undoubtedly, dating apps haven\u2019t helped; they are exacerbating existing problems. Human beings created these apps and shaped them according to their preexisting ideals and preferences. This is what we need to address before we worry about algorithms. Our habit of treating others like products that we use or dispose of according to our own needs and whims does not disappear when we abandon the online world, nor does our unwillingness to commit. If anything, dating apps have<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">brought to light our impoverished understanding of personhood, relationships, and what \u201cchoosing\u201d a partner truly means and requires. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In this last regard, whether consciously or not, many believe that we need ample options in order to choose freely. The larger the pool of contenders, the greater our chances of finding love\u2014or so we think. So we download apps with millions of users; in person, we look beyond our towns and social circles, always aiming at something bigger to increase our likelihood of finding our spouse (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dailyyonder.com\/amidst-declining-marriage-rates-rural-residents-are-still-more-likely-to-marry\/2025\/02\/07\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">small towns\u2019 higher marriage rates<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, in the meantime, prove our theory wrong from the start). But human beings are not objects meant to be compared and evaluated relative to one another, not collections of attributes that we approve or disapprove. Of course, one\u2019s values, politics, and interests say a lot about him, and they matter when it comes to matching. Too often, however, we stop there, with those labels and traits. Rarely, if ever, do we ask \u201c<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">why<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d: why they think as they do, vote as they do, dress as they do. It is these answers, not the first ones, that will make us want to share our life with a specific other. Those reasons and accounts are the personal answers that no AI companion could ever generate. Relationships unfold over time and in the course of shared experiences, not after a cursory evaluation of traits. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In today\u2019s dating landscape, shared experiences are no longer a critical component of assessing compatibility; we want to find our match quickly, efficiently, decisively. People, however, are not static\u2014nor are our relationships with them. They are complex and to be fully understood over the course of a lifetime. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few years ago, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/652822\/how-to-know-a-person-by-david-brooks\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">David Brooks described all these dynamics<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> under the telling chapter title \u201cHow not to<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">see a person.\u201d In his words, our inability to truly \u201cask questions,\u201d generalizing and putting people into different buckets, prevents us from seeing that \u201ceach particular life is far more astounding and unpredictable than any of the generalizations\u201d we may make. Inevitably, I would add, seeing others as lists of properties affects how we look at ourselves, too: we too become nothing more than collections of scores, grades, r\u00e9sum\u00e9 experiences, and of course, height, weight, and numbers in our bank accounts. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>People are not static\u2014nor are our relationships with them. They are complex and to be fully understood over the course of a lifetime.<\/blockquote><div class='blockquote-share'><span class='s-options'><a class=\"cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_1 cmsmasters-icon-facebook-1 cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=People are not static\u2014nor are our relationships with them. They are complex and to be fully understood over the course of a lifetime.\" target=\"_blank\"><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-square\"><\/i><\/a><a target=\"_blank\" class=\"blockquote_tw cmsmasters_social_icon cmsmasters_social_icon_3 cmsmasters-icon-twitter cmsmasters_social_icon_color\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?after=2026-08-06T00%3A00%3A00&page=2&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=People are not static\u2014nor are our relationships with them. They are complex and to be fully understood over the course of a lifetime.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 1992, long before dating apps existed, a UC Berkeley professor wrote a paper that I frequently refer to in my work on this topic. In \u201cConceptions of Choice and Conceptions of Autonomy,\u201d Meir Dan-Cohen showed how some of our truest experiences of freedom and autonomy are unrelated to \u201cpicking the best option\u201d from a set of choices. For example, he describes the experience of craving a particular food. Our freest choice is when we select the food we originally wanted, regardless of the breadth of the options presented to us. Another example is that of creative endeavors, where the artist\u2019s freedom in writing a particular song, or drawing one image instead of another, does not imply a \u201cselection,\u201d nor mean the artist rejected other options. Rather, it is an independent process of creation, an \u201celection,\u201d a free and determined exercise of the will.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, neither of these freedoms applies to the dating world. Clearly, we can neither \u201ccreate\u201d our partner, nor wait until we find the exact person we \u201ccraved.\u201d These examples, however, should make us wonder if love may be<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">just another area in which a \u201cwide and varied choice set\u201d is of little relevance. In my opinion, real romantic <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">freedom\u2014<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and genuine autonomy\u2014comes not so much from the abundance of the initial choice set, but from our subsequent intentionality. First, from our decision to get to know who is in front of us, beyond the labels; then, from<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> willing <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that one partner for life, deciding to build something with him. In other words, our romantic freedom and autonomy rest less on the eventuality<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that someone will be capable of making us forget everyone else and more on our choosing to do so. Love is a mix of accident and free will. The modern world, however, remembers the first part only. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the Thomists among us, what we just described will simply confirm what Aquinas had to say about the essence of love eight centuries ago. Love is not a feeling. It is neither a liking nor a matching of compatible traits and hobbies. To love is to will the good of the other, the saint taught us. Dating apps, I maintain, were shaped<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and are now used<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by people who are oblivious to this. Stuck in the room of choices and self-referential considerations, modern daters cannot see that love starts later, with an exercise of the will. Stated differently, a real match is not the person adoring us, but the one we wish to make happy. The question is whether we ultimately want to.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Is There a Cure? <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Both online and in-person, the bitter pill to swallow is that love is less about me and more about you. Love is wanting to bring about someone else\u2019s wellbeing: seeing them use their talents, fulfill their life\u2019s mission. Our good, in the meantime, will be in their hands.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Technology is not our problem. Our problem is an obsessive concern for our own good, our distrust of others, and the terror of losing ourselves. Our problem is having objectified ourselves and others. No algorithm will solve all this\u2014nor will a few in-person weekly meetups. Fixing the dating and marriage crisis demands thinking more deeply and then investing in the communities and relationships around us. If managed properly, even the apps can help: how we use them is entirely up to us.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/medium-shot-of-sad-red-haired-young-woman-looking-at-smartphone-screen-received-message-with-bad-news-sitting-on-yellow-couch-web-surfing-problem-solution-in-internet-chatting-online\/605004019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Technology is not our problem. Our problem is an obsessive concern for our own good, our distrust of others, and the terror of losing ourselves. No algorithm will solve this. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1078,"featured_media":101774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"b0de4a64-6221-45b0-bf12-0980062dcca2","beyondwords_preview_token":"c97607fc-6223-4d51-b3e7-15f41a2de874","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[11,2571,2575],"tags":[],"coauthors":[866],"class_list":["post-101769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-relationships","category-romance-and-relationships","pillars-sexuality-and-family"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,1078],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Today's Dating App Users Aren\u2019t Happy. 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In English, the title means \u201cthe joy of love.\u201d There was perhaps more struggle than joy in its development; it emerged as the product of a testy pair of synods in 2014 and 2015 that featured stolen books, leaked documents, letter campaigns, manipulated agendas, accusations, and wrestling over the working document that eventually yielded a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/roman_curia\/synod\/documents\/rc_synod_doc_20151026_relazione-finale-xiv-assemblea_en.html\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Relatio Finalis<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and then (in March 2016) <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amoris Laetitia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It nevertheless remains a significant contribution covering considerable territory and is worthy of our attention. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In it, Pope Francis seemed to wrestle with twin impulses around marriage. He wished to honor and protect fundamental marital and family goods enshrined in the magisterial teaching of the Church, and yet sympathized with those whose relationship situations are anomalous or \u201cirregular,\u201d of which there are many. This tension is in keeping with his entire papacy, in which grace consistently wrestled law<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> such that many Church observers expected\u2014either with hope or dread\u2014direct confrontation with Catholic teachings on marriage and sexuality. Instead, what resulted was more indirect: in-flight remarks, personnel-as-policy, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/francesco\/en\/motu_proprio\/documents\/papa-francesco-motu-proprio_20170908_summa-familiae-cura.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">institutional changes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While we anticipate joy in love, acknowledging <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">amoris patientia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014or suffering in love\u2014is necessary. \u201cInteraction breeds conflict,\u201d after all, is the closest thing to an iron law of the social universe. Too few recognize, and almost no one honors, this side effect of sharing a life and domicile with someone quite different from themselves. Suffering is absent in no marriage, periodic for most, and long-term for some. As I described in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Future-Christian-Marriage-Mark-Regnerus\/dp\/0190064935\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Future of Christian Marriage<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, my wife and I experienced no \u201choneymoon\u201d period after we wedded: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was unanticipated tough slogging early. After a couple years, I gave some thought to leaving. Some, but not much. Why not? I attribute it less to my religious commitments than to the utter absence of exemplars. I had no \u201chow to leave your wife\u201d narrative to follow. My parents and in-laws were still married. My grandparents had remained married. Their troubles had been overcome or else endured. Those friends of ours who had already tied the knot were still married. Within my social orbit in the mid-1990s, there was simply none of the \u201cinfectiousness\u201d of divorce that sociologists would later describe. I didn\u2019t know how to leave my wife, and there was no one to show me. I\u2019m glad for that. She and I slowly solved our problems, and the marriage improved. We built something together, including three remarkable children. I occasionally look back on those early years and wonder about what would have happened if I had left. I shudder to think of it. I know not everyone\u2019s difficult marriages will improve, and for many, the ceiling of marital happiness is not very high.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A low ceiling was the case for my paternal grandmother, a wonderful and kindly woman who endured what appears to have been a difficult marriage for fifty-eight years to the man I loved as my grandfather. I was glad they didn\u2019t split. That there is to be no marriage in the hereafter was perhaps of some comfort to her. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Church does not prevent alienated spouses from decoupling or even civilly divorcing. But neither should it be quick to suggest such choices. What it cannot endorse is a second marriage, that is, treating a first marriage like a golfer treats a \u201cmulligan,\u201d an errant first hit off the tee to be followed by a second attempt with a different ball. The doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage is challenging, in part because many maintain that to be trapped inside an unhappy marriage is the worst possible scenario, and the notion of preventing a second marriage simply cruel. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An annulment is not a \u201cCatholic divorce,\u201d but rather a declaration that a marriage was not actually valid at the time of its inception. It is a subtlety that befuddles many Protestants and not a few Catholics. Basically, if two serious Catholics are free to marry, consent to do so in the presence of an authorized priest or deacon, and understand the hallmarks of marriage\u2014that it\u2019s indissoluble, oriented toward raising children, and intends fidelity\u2014then it\u2019s very difficult to make a subsequent case for \u201cnullity.\u201d Annulment cases are built on the claim (and evidence in support of it) that one or more of these elements was absent at the time the marriage commenced. While there tends to be a rigorous inquiry into annulment proceedings, there are nevertheless disparities in decisions. Some diocesan tribunals issue annulments at rates notably higher than others, which can prompt scrutiny from the Apostolic Signatura in Rome. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pope Francis successfully reformed the annulment process in several ways, including giving more authority to local bishops to decide \u201cfast-track\u201d cases where nullity was obvious (e.g., those who were underage or already married), and urging tribunals to minimize fees to avoid unequal experiences in accessing the annulment process across the global Church. The doctrines around marriage itself remained untouched. His sensible reforms, however, do not appear to have notably affected annulment rates, which have broadly declined as marriage rates tumble<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The graph below displays the ratio of the number of annulment cases introduced in the years 2015, 2021, 2022, and 2024 to the number of marriages (between two Catholics) in the same year, sorted by a variety of countries with significant Catholic populations (and averaged to account for temporary COVID-era disruptions). One can read this as the number of annulment cases introduced for every Catholic wedding in a country in an average recent year. Not every annulment sought will be granted, but it\u2019s a sensible measure of interest in it. And while this is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about divorce <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">per se<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it is common for persons to seek an annulment when they are already civilly divorced\u2014if that category even applies in their country\u2014and wish to remarry in the Church. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-101756 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7bd818c4-a92a-4e45-b239-9b028f0b421b-1024x671.png\" alt=\"graph\" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7bd818c4-a92a-4e45-b239-9b028f0b421b-1024x671.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7bd818c4-a92a-4e45-b239-9b028f0b421b-300x197.png 300w, https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7bd818c4-a92a-4e45-b239-9b028f0b421b-768x503.png 768w, https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7bd818c4-a92a-4e45-b239-9b028f0b421b-1536x1006.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/7bd818c4-a92a-4e45-b239-9b028f0b421b.png 1670w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Graph created from information in<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2015, 2021, 2022, and 2024. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The United States displays the highest annulment-to-marriage ratio in the world (0.148), meaning there is around one annulment case introduced for every seven weddings. Korea reports just over one annulment for every ten weddings, and Canada for every thirteen. Historically Catholic Europe is in the middle, at one annulment for every sixty-three weddings in Italy, sixty-four in Germany, and eighty-six in France. The Latin American countries here exhibit varied ratios, while Africa (and the Philippines) show notably smaller ones. For example, the Philippines reports one annulment introduced for every 1,273 Catholic weddings. Remember: these are not about civil divorce decrees, and it may well be that plenty of those in failed unions in some countries simply never pursue an annulment. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In keeping with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholicworldreport.com\/2011\/04\/28\/annulment-nation\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">its elevated trendline<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the United States reported 14,023 annulment proceedings introduced in 2024 (not shown in the graph). By contrast, 2,404 annulments were introduced in Mexico, 400 in France, 208 in the<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Philippines, seventy-eight in Kenya, and twenty-eight in Cameroon. There is more to these numbers than simple differences in demand for annulments. In some locales, the (church) judicial process for pursuing an annulment is laborious and often understaffed. Canon lawyers are more numerous in the West, though they are not absent elsewhere. In other places, annulments are culturally proscribed or popularly perceived to be difficult to get. In secularized Europe, there is simply less interest in pursuing an annulment after a divorce. In Lebanon, there is no civil marriage or divorce at all\u2014it\u2019s a religious matter by definition. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the United States, none of these scenarios hold<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. What remains obvious, however, is the American impulse to split and recouple; I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s because Filipinos and Kenyans like their marriages more.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We didn\u2019t always think this way. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/online.ucpress.edu\/socdev\/article-abstract\/9\/1\/1\/192968\/Developmental-Idealism-and-a-Half-Century-of?redirectedFrom=fulltext\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sociologists studying the attitudes and behaviors<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of American mothers of young children back in 1962 observed that half of them believed that parents of children should <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> stay together if they \u201cdon\u2019t get along.\u201d In other words, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">amoris patientia <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was a bit more taken for granted. Just fourteen years later (in 1976), that figure had leapt to 80 percent before leveling off at 83 percent in 1993. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/esr\/article-abstract\/37\/4\/541\/6125358?redirectedFrom=fulltext\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sociologists assessing marital sentiments<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> across nine European countries observed the same theme. In a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">de facto<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> but not <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">de jure<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> manner, the post-conciliar era eroded popular conviction that marriage is sacramental, holy, and connected to procreativity. Vocations of all sorts hit the wall, and it signaled the beginning of a now-sixty-year struggle over human sexuality, the meaning of self-gift, and our ability to keep marital faith. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What does all this suggest? Under current social conditions, the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sensus fidei fidelium<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is apt to vary by region in its historic support of the Church\u2019s stable teachings on marriage and sexual relationships. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One European voice, newly recovered, inspires restraint. Ida Friederike G\u00f6rres was an Austro-Japanese laywoman and scholar, born in 1901, whose extensive writing on marriage was only recently made available in the English language. Her book <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Binds-Marriage-Forever-Friederike-G%C3%B6rres\/dp\/0813240395\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Binds Marriage Forever<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is short, frank, and compelling\u2014a rich and varied treasure of observations, questions, and occasional exasperations. G\u00f6rres died suddenly on May 15, 1971, one day after having exhorted the German bishops in the early days of the (West German) Synod of W\u00fcrzburg, an event which included laity in decision-making roles alongside bishops fifty years before the most recent synod. She was <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/article\/765108\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">eulogized<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by her younger friend Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, who described her voice as \u201cirreplaceable to the Church.\u201d Her character, he noted, was one of loyalty and unrestrained cheerfulness, absent any rigidity or fanaticism. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">G\u00f6rres considered \u201cthe right of the Christian \u2026 to change partners legitimately\u201d tantamount to \u201cthe right to permissible serial polygamy within the Church.\u201d This may strike some as unnecessarily inflammatory language, but <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/restud\/rdv001\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">thoughtful scholars reinforce<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> her perspective today. As one of several examples, Princeton University sociologist Dalton Conley refers to the pattern G\u00f6rres describes as \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0375422900\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">dynamic polygamy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d because even though spouses may split and move on to new unions (including marriages), some terms of the original union\u2019s obligations linger for decades. That is, significant aspects of a marriage\u2014things like material and financial child support, and the sharing of assets, responsibilities, and time\u2014don\u2019t actually conclude with divorce. Nor does it matter if we tell each other that the first marriage was \u201cerased\u201d through annulment. Legal, personal, and moral commitments remain, even while we seek to establish such commitments with a new person.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">G\u00f6rres, long dead by the time these annulment data were published, observed what the graph above still conveys about the sub-Saharan Church: \u201cThe African bishops are there, unconsciously, as representatives of a consensus, which encompasses the entire history of humankind on almost the entire globe.\u201d What sort of consensus do they represent? That marriage, until recently, was not utterly equated with romantic love (and hence fragile). G\u00f6rres was suggesting that outside the modern West, marriage still remains pivotal for basic survival and thriving. There, spouses are far more dependent on their marriages, and extended family is how one \u201cmakes it\u201d in conditions of greater scarcity. It\u2019s what marriage was about virtually everywhere (except among the rich or royal) until the twentieth century. The idea of responding to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">amoris patientia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by leaving an unpleasant marriage is far more unlikely in places like the Philippines, Congo, Kenya, Cameroon, Vietnam, Tanzania, and Peru. Whether it\u2019s a subjectively happy union takes a back seat to whether it\u2019s an objectively functional one. Death and divorce are experienced there as profound social and economic trials for families in a manner less familiar to the wealthier West.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whereas \u201ca particular idea of \u2018happiness\u2019 \u2026 in the erotic-sexual realm\u201d seems demanded for marriage to work in the West, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mutual<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">fondness<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, argues G\u00f6rres, is ample and better suited to the human person. The former principle, she insisted, was responsible for the ecclesial resistance to canon law she discerned in Germany in 1971, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholicworldreport.com\/2026\/04\/29\/sex-and-the-unity-of-the-catholic-church\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which has deepened in the decades since<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. G\u00f6rres directs attention back to a sacramental and sacrificial understanding of marriage when the world around us pushes a more political arrangement concerned with rights, power sharing, bargaining, and fear of domination, all held together by subjective happiness. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have a choice. We can look at the Church\u2019s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage as burdensome, backwards, or downright bizarre, or we can look at it as G\u00f6rres describes, \u201cas protection, preservation, guarantee, rootedness, as the greatest earthly security of all which one person can give to another\u2014and, moreover, as a reflection of God\u2019s immutability.\u201d Long before my wife and I were Catholic, this was a part of Church doctrine we had both come to believe\u2014that our marriage was an entity of its own that we had birthed but had no right to kill. It has been a shelter from storm. Of course we have witnessed <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">amoris patientia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It\u2019s part of the deal, G\u00f6rres reminds:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anyone who understands marriage as the lifelong bond of two people \u2026 knows or should know that all possible difficulties and crises have been factored in from the start. As the wedding liturgy acknowledges: \u201cfor better and for worse, in health and sickness<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u2026\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It could never be just about \u201cfor better\u201d and \u201cin health.\u201d But isn\u2019t there a limit to trouble, irritation, addiction, betrayal? G\u00f6rres responds with a question of her own: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When one partner ravages his soul, is not the other one called all the more to go to battle with him for his sake? Is this obligation rescinded by the separation that may have become necessary? Quite on the contrary. The door must remain open.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For how long? Until what happens? Tougher medicine still, though befitting a robust rather than a tepid commitment to marriage:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the other one does not come back, the one who remains behind will accompany the one who has departed with prayer, and, most importantly, with atonement: responsible for him or her until death.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I realize these are blasphemous sentiments to the average Christian\u2014Catholic or Protestant\u2014who has his limits in what he is willing to tolerate. But mirroring Jesus\u2019s undying fidelity to his oft-faithless bride is not just admirable. It\u2019s possible. It is walking in his steps, a \u201cwhite\u201d martyrdom of sorts. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Should it be expected? <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amoris Laetitia<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is for realists, which means that regardless of whether we expect undying fidelity after a collapsed marriage, it will be uncommon in its instances. I don\u2019t begrudge priests the decisions they must make in their discernment, counsel, and care, as <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">AL<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> details. G\u00f6rres herself empathizes, highlighting alternative penitential approaches for the Church to consider. And yet she came to learn that the hard path of discipleship amid marital dissolution was nevertheless possible: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I understood this for the first time\u2014and ever since then\u2014when an abandoned, divorced woman \u2026 said to me: \u201cNow I have to be faithful for two.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I once knew such a woman, a Catholic schoolteacher from my Protestant youth. First, her eldest son was killed at age twenty-seven in a commercial airline crash in 1987. Then her husband left her. Decades later, he died. Then her other two children died, also prematurely. And finally, having witnessed it all, she too passed away. I don\u2019t know if she was a saint. I just know that, with the help of faith and vibrant friendships, she offered up what was dear to her\u2014her marriage and her family, one by one\u2014to God in his wisdom, all the while keeping faith. That can\u2019t not matter. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On every August 29th, the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist. Unlike most martyr saints, the Baptist didn\u2019t die for testifying to the Christ. Rather, he was executed because he held that marriage isn\u2019t merely a private matter for us to do with as we choose, but rather a public one subject to the moral law. John refused to remain silent when the king wedded his brother\u2019s estranged wife and then demanded the public respect it as the legitimate marriage it wasn\u2019t. For that, perhaps the Baptist could become the patron saint of those whose love entails great suffering. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/close-up-the-bride-and-groom-wear-rings-to-each-other-against-the-background-of-the-sea-sand-and-blue-sky-summer-day-high-quality-photo\/670580539\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Image licensed via Adobe Stock.<\/em><\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have a choice. We can look at the Church\u2019s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage as burdensome, or we can look at it as G\u00f6rres describes, \u201cas protection, preservation, guarantee, rootedness, as the greatest earthly security of all which one person can give to another.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":533,"featured_media":101760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"1","beyondwords_integration_method":"rest-api","beyondwords_project_id":"54010","beyondwords_content_id":"aefb2e80-5b69-498b-9edc-02a97b8e8a13","beyondwords_preview_token":"5b7c8df5-e364-4570-960b-fe2c9349f308","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"standard","beyondwords_language_code":"en_US","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"8540","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1069,1089,21],"tags":[],"coauthors":[99],"class_list":["post-101755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-institutions","category-marriage","pillars-sexuality-and-family","pillars-the-human-person"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,533],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Amoris Patientia - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We have a choice. We can look at the Church\u2019s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage as burdensome, or we can look at it as G\u00f6rres describes, \u201cas protection, preservation, guarantee, rootedness, as the greatest earthly security of all which one person can give to another.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101755\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Regnerus\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"11 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Mark Regnerus\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e99c1dcaadfd4d2b54ba00decfd3c8ed\"},\"headline\":\"Amoris Patientia\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-28T00:00:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2729,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/AdobeStock_670580539.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Family\",\"Institutions\",\"Marriage\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/\",\"name\":\"Amoris Patientia - Public Discourse\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101755\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/AdobeStock_670580539.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-28T00:00:25+00:00\",\"description\":\"We have a choice. 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