[{"id":101746,"date":"2026-08-26T20:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T00:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101746"},"modified":"2026-08-26T12:00:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T16:00:52","slug":"common-sense-wins-the-day-in-west-virginia-v-b-p-j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101746\/","title":{"rendered":"Common Sense Wins the Day in West Virginia v. B. P. J.<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Common sense may be common to us all, but it doesn\u2019t always win the day. Good for the Supreme Court for making sure it does in the recent <\/span>decision<\/span><\/a> of <\/span>West Virginia <\/span><\/i>v. <\/span>B. P. J.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

West Virginia enacted a law in 2021 that school sports teams for the female sex would not admit the male sex\u2014crucially, with sex being determined by biology. B. P. J. was a boy who identified as a girl and started socially transitioning while in third grade, adopting a new name. Puberty blockers then followed, with hormones starting in sixth grade. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

B. P. J. liked running. With the enactment of the West Virginia law, the school principal told B. P. J.\u2019s mother that B. P. J. would not be allowed to run in the girls\u2019 cross-country and track-and-field teams. B. P. J. sued the state officials and agencies, claiming violations of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.<\/p>\n

A consolidated case, <\/span>Little <\/span><\/i>v.<\/span> Hecox<\/span><\/i>, concerned Hecox, a man who identified as a woman. Unlike B. P. J., Hecox had undergone puberty before taking hormones. Like B. P. J., Hecox had sought to play on women\u2019s sports teams, but faced a similar law in Idaho. Hecox sued Idaho\u2019s state officials and agencies, claiming a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The Court noted that in the last few years, twenty-seven states had enacted similar laws.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Supreme Court ruled 9\u00ad\u20130 that such a law did not violate Title IX, and 6\u20133 that it did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Title IX <\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Title IX was enacted to ensure that no one \u201con the basis of sex\u201d would be discriminated against in any educational program receiving federal funds, with a subsequent amendment applying it to sports activities. In a passage that should gladden the heart of anyone for its common sense, the Court ruled that the term \u201csex\u201d in Title IX \u201ccannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex,\u201d and that the \u201cordinary meaning\u201d of the word was \u201cbiological sex and not gender identity.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Brett Kavanaugh is known to have been a basketball <\/span>coach<\/span><\/a> himself. Writing for the majority, he said that in the world of sports, the physical differences between girls and boys, women and men, manifested in nothing less than matters of basic safety and fairness. These inherent physical differences between the two sexes are, <\/span>inter alia<\/span><\/i>, \u201cheight, weight, strength, speed, endurance, and jumping ability.\u201d Future generations might wonder at such passages from the highest tribunal of the 250-year-old republic, begging the patience of the future reader\u2014but such is our time. The Court explained that girls and women would face a higher risk of injury when playing against boys and men in the same space, especially in contact sports.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Further, Justice Kavanaugh wrote, the world of sports was necessarily zero-sum. A biological boy who made it onto the team knocked out a girl who otherwise would have been there. A biological man with the gold medal on the podium, impossibly tall and towering over others, kicked down the woman who would have stood there instead, earned gold medal in hand. Sports declares winners and losers. In a world of gender-identity sports, girls lose.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So there was no violation of Title IX, the law that was put in place precisely that girls would not be discriminated against on the basis of their sex, necessarily taking into account their bodies as who they were. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Equal Protection<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As to the issue of the Equal Protection Clause, the Court applied a standard known as intermediate scrutiny for classifications based on sex, like the West Virginia and Idaho laws in question. A law survives intermediate scrutiny if it is \u201csubstantially related\u201d to the state\u2019s \u201cimportant\u201d governmental interest. The Court found that a state maintaining separate sports teams for girls and women based on biological sex met the standard, given the same safety and fairness analyses, and a second-order interest in ensuring that girls and women not be deterred from playing sports. So the Court found that there was no violation of the Equal Protection Clause, either.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pirates\u2019 \u201cSex\u201d Scandal<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But wait. Haven\u2019t we been here before? Hasn\u2019t the Court opined on what the word \u201csex\u201d meant\u2014and come out exactly on the <\/span>opposite<\/span><\/a> side of the road? Yes: and just six years ago, in <\/span>Bostock <\/span><\/i>v. <\/span>Clayton County<\/span><\/i>. In <\/span>that<\/span><\/i> case, Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said that the word \u201csex\u201d meant … whatever anyone wanted it to mean. Gender identity, sexual orientation, transgender status? Sure. All of the above. What was more, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, that the Supreme Court did all this while \u201cfl[ying] a textualist flag,\u201d in the name of \u201cthe purest and highest form of textualism,\u201d sailing the constitutional waters \u201clike a pirate ship.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So how did the Court handle the piracy of <\/span>Bostock<\/span><\/i> in the present case, in which \u201csex\u201d meant exactly sex and only sex? We read the Court saying that <\/span>Bostock<\/span><\/i> didn\u2019t apply here because it was a Title VII case, not Title IX. That was an employment issue, not a sports and education one. That other statute said \u201cbecause of … sex,\u201d whereas here, we\u2019ve got \u201con the basis of sex.\u201d And, the Court added, we already said in <\/span>Bostock <\/span><\/i>that we \u201cdo not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.\u201d So, well, there.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether that explanation will prove persuasive to future readers\u2014or to the present reader, for that matter\u2014is up for debate. But it seems the pirate ship ought to be dismantled and sunk in the face of the real ship. The Ship and The Not Ship cannot both be the <\/span>real<\/span><\/i> ship. Sex can\u2019t mean \u201csex and only sex\u201d but also \u201csex plus whatever the new thing says always.\u201d They can\u2019t <\/span>both<\/span><\/i> be true.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason, Organ of Truth<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Be that as it may, we are grateful for the state of the law today with <\/span>B. P. J.<\/span><\/i> The Court additionally noted, perhaps with an eye to possible cases in the future, that a number of Supreme Court justices have gone on record that they thought classifications in law having to do with gender identity or transgender status would receive only rational basis review, which is a deferential standard that just about always results in the law\u2019s being considered to pass constitutional review. It is also noteworthy that the majority did not use any pronouns for B. P. J. in the entirety of its opinion. What a contrast this is to the dissenting opinions by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, where terms like \u201ccisgender,\u201d sex \u201cassigned at birth,\u201d and the pronouns adopted by B. P. J. were deployed liberally, betraying a certain anthropological assumption. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

St. Thomas Aquinas famously says that <\/span>law is<\/span><\/a> \u201c<\/span>an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated.\u201d It is an ordinance of <\/span>reason<\/span><\/i>, thank God, not of the tyranny of my feelings or flights of fancy. Reason, in turn, C. S. Lewis <\/span>says<\/span><\/a>, \u201cis the natural organ of truth.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because human beings are endowed with reason <\/span>by definition<\/span><\/a>, truth is accessible, that is, <\/span>commonly <\/span><\/i>accessible, to all of us: ours to pursue, to contemplate, to know and love and dwell in. So we ought to take care not to play fast and loose with language, down to pronouns and categories, for all this is about nothing less than truth and reality. <\/span>One then applauds Justice Thomas, who declared in his concurrence, \u201c<\/span>Sex is an immutable \u2018biological\u2019 characteristic; … it is binary; and \u2018man\u2019 and \u2018woman,\u2019 \u2018boy\u2019 and \u2018girl,\u2019 are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex.\u201d <\/span>Quoting Josef Pieper\u2019s <\/span>Abuse of Language\u2014Abuse of Power<\/span><\/i>, he further said, \u201c<\/span>To use language to obscure reality\u2014to show \u2018indifference regarding the truth\u2019\u2014is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens \u2018as equal[s].\u2019\u201d <\/span>Justice Thomas was, characteristically, bold and right.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We would do well, all of us, to <\/span>stop<\/span><\/a> using the word \u201cgender\u201d to mean \u201csex.\u201d (By contrast, \u201cgender\u201d is the right word in the narrow context of certain foreign languages\u2019 grammatical rules, say, of declensions of <\/span>gendered<\/span><\/i> nouns and adjectives in Latin.) It would help our very confused world, one interlocutor at a time. Perhaps the next time the Supreme Court takes up a similar case, it will be able to say simply \u201csex\u201d for the redundant \u201cbiological sex,\u201d the latter of which it had to say quite a lot in <\/span>B. P. J.<\/span><\/i> But such is our time. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For the Little Crosses<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Justice Kavanaugh was extra solicitous in his opinion to emphasize that no transgender student-athlete deserved any ostracism or vilification. (To be sure, he said as much for girls as well.) Perhaps he had in mind B. P. J.\u2019s arguments. Heather Jackson, <\/span>self-professed<\/span><\/a> \u201cfierce\u201d mother of B. P. J., <\/span>said<\/span><\/a> on Lambda Legal, \u201cThe overt hate that has become so normalized in our society is hurting all of our children, but it is directed most often and most viciously at our LGBTQ+ kids.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Certainly Justice Kavanaugh is right that no one should be abused. The following goes unreported in the Supreme Court opinion, but here was <\/span>Adaleia Cross<\/span><\/a>, a young girl who had to play sports with B. P. J. in their West Virginia school. Adaleia lost out on sports opportunities and rankings against B. P. J. But then she also had to endure B. P. J.\u2019s <\/span>telling<\/span><\/a> her off repeatedly in the shared locker room, on the track, and elsewhere with vile and violent sexual language too profane for this publication.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ah, but B. P. J. was the one suing?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

West Virginia <\/span><\/i>v.<\/span> B. P. J.<\/span><\/i> did not <\/span>prescribe<\/span><\/i> that states limit girls\u2019 and women\u2019s sports to the female sex. It merely held that states that did draw that line did not run afoul of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. For now, though, for girls like Adaleia Cross and for all friends of reason and common sense, the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to call a spade a spade and sex sex is most welcome.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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

The Court did not prescribe that states limit girls\u2019 and women\u2019s sports to the female sex. It merely held that states that did draw that line did not run afoul of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause. 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For now, though, for girls like Adaleia Cross and for all friends of reason and common sense, the Supreme Court\u2019s decision to call a spade a spade and sex sex is most welcome.\u00a0","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101746\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101746\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101746\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_470519767.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_470519767.jpg","width":1400,"height":695,"caption":"Girls running track"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101746\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Common Sense Wins the Day in West Virginia v. 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J."}]},{"@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\/24790ec816950e9103b96c4faed9ac94","name":"Adeline A. Allen","description":"Adeline A. Allen is a contributing writer for\u00a0Public Discourse, Professor of Law at Trinity Law School, and Associate Fellow at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity. She was also a visiting fellow at the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Her scholarship focuses on the natural law foundations of contract law and the family, the view of the human person in bioethics, and the nature of contracting. Some of her scholarship and writings have been published on\u00a0Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Public Discourse, First Things, Church Life Journal, World,\u00a0and\u00a0CiRCE Institute.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/adeline-a-allen\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101746","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\/1002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101749,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101746\/revisions\/101749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101746"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101728,"date":"2026-08-25T20:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T00:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101728"},"modified":"2026-08-21T13:24:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T17:24:55","slug":"beware-the-old-man-on-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101728\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware the Old Man on Campus\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of my best friends retired at the end of the school year.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We taught together for almost thirty years in the same social studies department. I will miss his big personality (and inappropriate jokes) at staff meetings. My faculty mailbox will be noticeably emptier now that we can no longer dump unwanted trash into each other\u2019s boxes as an ongoing joke. I will even miss our bickering about current events. Over the years our political views have diverged, especially since the rise of the MAGA movement, but we never ceased to be genuine friends.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the years have passed, I have watched close friends retire, transfer to other campuses, and, in one heartbreaking case, pass away from cancer. I teach at the same high school I attended as a student. For many years, I watched my favorite teachers leave the profession. But this retirement has hit me hard.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My friend was the longest-serving member of the faculty. He was the \u201cold man\u201d on campus. His retirement has now left a vacancy for the \u201cold man\u201d moniker, one I seem fated to inherit in just a few years as I am now tied for the second-longest-serving teacher on campus. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Soon, I will be standing on top of this disquieting mountain. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I always knew this day would come, and I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s a good thing. Veteran teachers who enter their fifties, as I have just done this summer, tend to follow one of two paths when reaching the sunset of their careers: either they acquire a quiet authority that makes them beloved institutional figures, or they become so cynical and crotchety that they gradually marginalize themselves in the eyes of colleagues. Sometimes their toxicity is so potent that everyone starts to think the same thing: it\u2019s time for you to retire.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have spent this summer reflecting on how best to avoid this fate. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since this is not only the summer of my fiftieth birthday, but also the summer of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Odyssey<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, it is timely and helpful to realize that teachers who reach their fifties often begin to hear the song of the pedagogic Sirens. In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Odyssey<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> they call out to Odysseus, singing: \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips … <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But in the classroom, what these \u201choneyed voices\u201d offer veteran teachers is a personification of accumulated wisdom from throughout their careers. Their song is seductive because it sounds remarkably like the accumulated wisdom of long experience, crying out to veteran teachers standing wearily in the stern of their teaching ships. If heeded to excess, this old man wisdom can slowly curdle into cynicism and snark, then self-indulgent crankiness, and finally, a kind of professional early death from alienation.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the Greeks knew well, knowing too much can often stifle more than stimulate, deaden more than enliven. The Sirens of experience tempt veteran teachers with a dangerous promise: that nothing in education can surprise them. Every new initiative is a signpost of decline. New teachers never have anything to offer. The teacher version of Siren song sounds like a melody of erudition. But sadly, it is often cynicism wearing the mask of experience. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We teachers in our fifties are a skeptical lot\u2014and for good reason. Three decades on a campus gives you a trustworthy intuition for which policies are worth trying and which are predictable disasters. But that same experience has also taught me to change my mind.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the first decade of my career, during the era of No Child Left Behind, I bemoaned the obsession with standardized testing and data-driven instruction. I was certain it would drain the joy out of the classroom and let bad teachers hide behind \u201cteaching to the test.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The reality was different. I came to see that inspiration alone isn\u2019t enough\u2014effective teaching needs clear objectives too. What do students need to know? What should they be able to do on the last day of school that they couldn\u2019t do on the first? Test scores gave us a way to answer those questions and gave us something I hadn\u2019t expected: camaraderie. We were united in our desire to beat the school across town. No one wanted to be the weak link.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I was just as skeptical of giving partial credit for missing work\u2014it felt like rewarding students for doing nothing. But a zero does not just record a failure; it distorts the whole average, turning one missed assignment into the grade that defines the semester. If an A and an F should average a C, not an F, then partial credit is not leniency. It is arithmetic.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes, however, our skepticism is justified. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, a school district in upstate New York launched a plan to use an AI humanoid robot in the classroom and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/07\/29\/g-s1-136072\/ai-robot-teacher\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">quickly had to pause<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the plan due to overwhelming teacher and parent concerns. Earlier this year, First Lady Melania Trump walked into the White House East Room next to a robot. She <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefings-statements\/2026\/03\/first-lady-melania-trump-convenes-record-45-nations-at-the-white-house-and-introduces-american-built-humanoid\/?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">asked the audience<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[i]magine a humanoid educator named \u201cPlato.\u201d Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous\u2014literature, science, art, philosophy, mathematics, and history\u2014Humanity\u2019s entire corpus of information is available in the comfort of your home. Plato will provide a personalized experience, adaptive to the needs of each student. Plato is always patient, and always available.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Plato wasn\u2019t personal and patient; he was unnerving and dystopian. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are certain universal and timeless truths about what works in a classroom that no technological advancement (even a humanoid robot) will ever change. And this knowledge is where being the old man on campus can have power and resonance.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The greatest source of classroom magic never emanates from the newest software or the most cutting-edge gizmos, but from the common humanity of teacher and student. It is rooted in the timeless relationship between the instructor and the learner\u2014a relationship devoted to enlarging a young person\u2019s intellectual and moral horizons in the hope of helping students live richer, more meaningful lives. The most powerful teaching tool in the world is communicating to a child that a teacher cares about his success\u2014something no AI humanoid or Chromebook can ever do. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As I have grown older, I have found that communicating this simple truth has become more difficult. Sometimes my caring becomes twisted into frustration. I find myself, despite my best intentions, getting agitated, and I can hear the song of the Sirens. I don\u2019t live online. I don\u2019t know the endlessly evolving slang. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s unreasonable to ask my students to read difficult texts, study for an exam, or embrace a five-day school week. Their dizzying absenteeism remains a constant source of frustration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The chasm separating a fifty-year-old man from a modern high school senior is sometimes so profound, so gaping, that we seem like different species. Just as I have trouble understanding them, I know they sometimes have trouble understanding me.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The distance between us widens as the years roll on. I age, while my students remain perpetually seventeen. I have lost both parents and my older sister. Some of my closest friends have endured colossal tragedies. How do I explain to teenagers the torment of lost pregnancies or the endless pressure of raising a family? How do I describe the torture of kidney stones or my private fear of suffering the indignities of old age?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most of all, how can my students possibly understand that my greatest fear in the decade ahead has nothing to do with money, health, or marriage? I worry that this profession I have cherished my whole life\u2014one that has shaped my soul and colored nearly all my dreams\u2014will change so much that I can no longer do it. I fear that what I have to offer will be ignored, mocked, or deemed irrelevant.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More alarming still, what if the one gift I have always possessed in the classroom suddenly deserts me? I have always been able to communicate my passion for the American experiment in self-government: my reverence for the achievements won by generations of extraordinary men and women, and my gratitude for the sacrifices of countless citizens whose quiet labor made my freedom possible. What if, in the years ahead, that passion no longer reaches anyone? What if I become an out-of-touch, well-meaning old man who can no longer ignite even the smallest spark of civic curiosity or pride\u2014an actor still delivering the same familiar lines after the audience has stopped finding the story compelling? \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier this year, one of America\u2019s most beloved novelists, Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, published the novel <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/04\/books\/review\/the-things-we-never-say-elizabeth-strout.html\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Things We Never Say<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about an aging and once-great high school history teacher, Artie Dam, who begins to feel the creep of insignificance as he ages in the classroom. Strout\u2019s description of Dam\u2019s angst gives voice to what it means to fear becoming the Old Man on campus, what it means to fear the Sirens, and alas, what it means to fear the loss of being able to touch souls and ameliorate minds:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was flooded with a great understanding. He was not fully himself any longer. He could not have described this to anyone, and he could not describe it to himself, but his mind seemed to be increasingly separated from this world: His mind was here, and the world was there. He was on a downward-sloping path, and no matter how hard he would try, he understood that day as he sat in his car that something was going to happen to him and he would not be able to prevent it.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have no doubt that I will become the Old Man on campus. But which Old Man I become remains a mystery. I hope I can ignore the seduction of the Sirens. I hope I can avoid the fate of Artie Dam. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Above all, I hope I become a bridge that leads students to a lifetime of learning rather than a barrier that turns them away from the enchantments that can only be enjoyed by a truly educated mind.<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/middle-aged-male-teacher-reading-book-beside-laptop-at-desk-studying-and-reviewing-notes-in-classroom-ideal-for-education-productivity-knowledge-concepts\/2107999603\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are certain universal and timeless truths about what works in a classroom that no technological advancement (even a humanoid robot) will ever change. And this knowledge is where being the old man on campus can have power and resonance.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1234,"featured_media":101732,"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":"b2a5cca0-182c-4996-a495-54b8dd0c6945","beyondwords_preview_token":"1b48d27c-6a88-46c8-92f5-d84725d2351d","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":[13,608],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1141],"class_list":["post-101728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-human-dignity","pillars-education-and-culture"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,1234],"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>Beware the Old Man on Campus\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There are certain universal and timeless truths about what works in a classroom that no technological advancement (even a humanoid robot) will ever change. 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It cannot cohere because it set out, from day one, to challenge the most fundamental truth of being human: the universal <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">telos <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of man and woman and the biological and cultural fact that they require each other, that they find their fullest natural meaning in the other. The first irrefutable fact of life is that humanity doesn\u2019t work anywhere without this beautifully profound and complementary mystery.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pride Month 2026 marked the date on which two of its groundbreaking leaders publicly confessed their movement\u2019s ungovernable anthropological problem.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Andrew Sullivan was the first, ever the rainbow movement\u2019s prophet. In 1989, he made the first <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2015\/06\/gay-marriage-votes-and-andrew-sullivan-his-landmark-1989-essay-making-a-conservative-case-for-gay-marriage.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">serious proposal<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New Republic<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for definitionally and functionally de-sexing marriage through legal same-sex unions. He remarkably argued that doing so \u201ccould bring the essence of gay life\u2014a gay male couple\u2014into the heart of the traditional straight family,\u201d as if that were ever a goal of gay politics. He admitted: \u201cMy own guess is that most gays would embrace such a goal with as much (if not more) commitment as straights.\u201d It was a ridiculous claim that no one believes. Last year <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wall Street Journal <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">enthusiastically featured a gay throuple in a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/real-estate\/luxury-homes\/throuple-home-renovation-255a0db8\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">splashy celebratory spread<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sullivan now widely admits being stunned that winning gay marriage in 2015 would so quickly lead to the erasure of what started the movement. In 2023, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/andrewsullivan.substack.com\/p\/the-queers-versus-the-homosexuals-cfd\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">he lamented<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> how the LGBT project devolved into \u201cthe queers versus the homosexuals,\u201d with the latter losing badly. He admitted, \u201cWe are in a new era and the erasure of gay men and lesbians is intensifying.\u201d Sullivan added, \u201cNo one held a news conference and announced that from 2015 on, after <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Obergefell<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the gay rights movement had changed its entire rationale.\u201d The fact is, \u201cqueers now run what was once the gay rights movement\u201d and \u201cthey quietly changed the meaning of the word \u2018gay\u2019 so that it no longer referred to same-sex attraction, but to same-<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">gender<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> attraction; and changed the word \u2018men\u2019 to include people with vaginas and uteruses.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few of us publicly warned, back in the 2000s when large open-auditorium college campus debate <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pridesource.com\/article\/27699\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was a thing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, that legalized same-sex marriage would obliterate the meaning of male and female. Sullivan\u2019s team laughed at us, uproariously. We were right, though.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just days into 2026\u2019s Pride Month, Sullivan <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/andrewsullivan.substack.com\/p\/the-tq-threat-to-lgb-rights-f02\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was back<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> hammering what he terms \u201cthe TQ+ threat to LGB Rights.\u201d As evidence, he cites socialist New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s June 1 <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/nycmayor\/status\/2061434503264895375?s=46\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pride statement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that referred \u201csolely to \u2018queer and trans people,\u2019 excising LGBs from the movement we built.\u201d This gay founding father explained the new LGBT reality with brutal honesty: \u201cThat\u2019s where we are in gay and lesbian world this Pride month. Queer as f*ck.\u201d He claims this is \u201csetting us back 20 years.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the final day of Pride Month 2026, a younger groundbreaking gay leader (not yet conceived by his mother and father when Sullivan wrote his 1989 essay) <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/30\/opinion\/queer-gay-rights.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">took to the pages<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to join Sullivan in protesting what happened to their movement. Matthew Vines was just twenty-four when he published his highly influential <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">God and the Gay Christian<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2014, which set out to make \u201cthe biblical case for same-sex relationships.\u201d Of course, there is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=mark%2010%3A6-8&version=ESV\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no such case<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in Scripture, but his <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/firstthings.com\/why-matthew-vines-is-wrong-about-the-bible-and-homosexuality\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">creative hermeneutics<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> succeeded in confusing the minds of untold numbers of young people who wanted to believe him.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vines\u2019s essay is entitled \u201cI\u2019m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.\u201d He is deeply troubled that the Q is fully eclipsing the G. He\u2019s also getting <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/opinion\/nyt-wsj-gay-queer-stigma\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">trounced<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonblade.com\/2026\/07\/01\/actually-im-gay-and-im-queer-it-matters\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">gay press<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Vines admits this is a \u201cworldview\u201d skirmish within his movement, centered in the fact that the \u201cborn this way\u201d claim \u201cis being undermined by those who argue that same-sex orientation is better thought of as a part of a wider rebellion against social norms.\u201d He\u2019s concerned that this is putting the future legality of queer marriage at risk.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course it is. The claim was always a manufactured narrative for political expediency, and Vines is firmly planted on the losing side.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gay politics gave up on the \u201cborn-this-way\u201d claim years ago. Lesbian scholar Lisa Diamond <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RjX-KBPmgg4\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">explained<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in a viral 2018 TED Talk that the assertion needs to be abandoned because it is \u201cunjust\u201d and \u201cdoesn\u2019t advance LGBT equality.\u201d Science gave up on it because the most sophisticated work in genetics concludes \u201cthere is no \u2018gay gene,\u2019\u201d as one MIT\/Harvard geneticist <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net\/91244923\/d41586_019_02585_6-libre.pdf?1663578118=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DCagdas_Turk_dusuncesi_ve_modernlesmesi.pdf&Expires=1783798660&Signature=gw~-UYUgBJwDqcrpypAD88IuvbFDMiMvyHZaMxmonXOvofITIutTgibraNCwwZQMJwxcbTOYGZ5MJXps~0B8RPleRsR-aW1hFwOdbJjjgo9d5FjTAQREl3953VkoHyNExuo9GKbs2Ja0-KveXxY6zMOu5H1WbGHqG0s7u3dE1tUBJVS4YWSG8~EKT8Bun5WGy0h2zS-TH0Jz5CTO1A26UTI6MONhbe6T1vy9RjTk34ABd9z4fEK~J0N0OWSotdalstWmi8mqcMS9VqSgRHk3HeL4RQP5GiiiPu8TSKHyd87k0DYdGbLqGQBi7h3UgdAOPZTQMKqUq-eR9J2f~zqdmw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">put it<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2019. And lesbian <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York Times<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> columnist Lydia Polgreen <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/12\/01\/opinion\/politics\/life-without-regret.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ceremoniously rejected<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the \u201cborn-this-way\u201d claim in a lengthy 2023 essay because, \u201cTo many queer people, myself very much included, it feels like an incomplete account of their experiences, a simplification that shortchanges their lives.\u201d It left no room for creative sexual innovation. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The lie certainly served its rhetorical and political purposes, though. Sullivan and Vines, and others like them, are simply angry that their movement did not stick with the more conservative and politically expedient \u201cWe\u2019re just like you, save our radical views of marriage and family redefinition.\u201d Their end was always about de-sexing humanity\u2019s first and most important institution because that\u2019s what happens when you claim that dad\u2019s gay lover can replace a child\u2019s mom in every way.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The LGB project was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">always<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> about challenging the natural essentiality of male and female for each other, for sexuality, the family, parentage and for society. The manufactured claim of the same-sex couple\u2019s social legitimacy screams this every time it is asserted. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The anthropological incoherence of LGBTQ is rooted in the fact that the first three letters require, and are squarely built on, the human binary, while the added Q and the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lgbtqia.fandom.com\/wiki\/Gender_identity\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ever evolving<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cosmopolitan.com\/lifestyle\/a64501380\/gender-identity-definitions\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">20<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medicinenet.com\/what_are_the_72_other_genders\/article.htm\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">72<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/helpfulprofessor.com\/types-of-genders-list\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">81<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, or <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/261451893969652\/posts\/1657212041060290\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">112<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> other gender identities exist to overturn it. The L, G and B make no sense outside of the sexual binary.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>The LGB project was always about challenging the natural essentiality of male and female for each other, for sexuality, the family, parentage and for society. The manufactured claim of the same-sex couple\u2019s social legitimacy screams this every time it is asserted.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=The LGB project was always about challenging the natural essentiality of male and female for each other, for sexuality, the family, parentage and for society. The manufactured claim of the same-sex couple\u2019s social legitimacy screams this every time it is asserted.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=The LGB project was always about challenging the natural essentiality of male and female for each other, for sexuality, the family, parentage and for society. The manufactured claim of the same-sex couple\u2019s social legitimacy screams this every time it is asserted.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.webmd.com\/a-to-z-guides\/what-does-genderqueer-mean\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">gender queer<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> changed all that, creating whole new and endless frontiers. Yes, gender and queer theory have resulted in men who pretend to be women being further up the existing feminist power differential than actual women. It\u2019s why saying \u201cO.G. lesbianism is going extinct\u201d has been recognized as a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/outlook\/the-latest-form-of-transphobia-saying-lesbians-are-going-extinct\/2021\/03\/18\/072a95fc-8786-11eb-82bc-e58213caa38e_story.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">form of transphobia<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> since 2021. And there is no sexual orientation anymore because queer theory deems it too \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/monroeuniversity.libguides.com\/c.php?g=1356178&p=10100964\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">essentialist<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d It has been replaced by a more elastic <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/25772652\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sexual configuration theory<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that celebrates sexual fluidity over a fixed \u201cborn that way\u201d conception. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sullivan and Vines are right. Their old movement is no longer recognizable. The supposedly set binary sexual-orientation scheme of their day has, in just a few quick years, morphed into a wholly fluid spectrum mentality resting on subjective identity. People who were once \u201cborn this way\u201d can now become whatever they feel they are, and the rainbow flag celebrates it all. But as these men <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/jk_rowling\/status\/1269389298664701952?lang=en\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and others<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> have noted, if male and female are not objectively real, same-sex attraction loses all meaning. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But of course, this is their own doing. Sullivan, Vines, and their fellow revolutionaries are the ones who defined it all away, for that is exactly what same-sex \u201cmarriage\u201d and \u201cfamily\u201d do. It demands that what makes male and female uniquely essential must be constantly and emphatically denied. Otherwise, the natural family joining male and female is superior to all same-sex pairings. We cannot miss that it was no mere coincidence that Bruce Jenner <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/hollywood\/2015\/06\/caitlyn-jenner-bruce-cover-annie-leibovitz?srsltid=AfmBOoq5VF-SH7vhU_B4oXsc7rLeX8RzPPuCgoChG8I5uhBMoXvSEoqN\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">infamously appeared<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the cover of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vanity Fair<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> magazine as Caitlyn within hours of the landmark <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/2014\/14-556\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Obergefell v. Hodges<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> decision. These two radicalisms go together as different manifestations of the same thing: the erasure of human nature.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And that is the real problem facing people like Sullivan and Vines: their movement has no self-limiting regulator. They only have themselves and their selective shortsightedness to blame. Their movement was radical in the extreme from the beginning. The T, the Q, and everything else that will ever come under their fashionably inclusive + must not only be welcomed but deemed worthy of full celebration. Radicalism is their movement\u2019s functional DNA and it is all dead-set against what male and female objectively are. This troubling fact is precisely what every pride flag symbolizes. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And it is what\u2019s presently cannibalizing what every Pride Month claims to celebrate. Its leaders are recognizing this inconvenient truth.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/colorful-rainbow-gay-pride-flag-being-waved-in-the-breeze-by-a-hand-wearing-a-sweatband\/210332798\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pride Month 2026 marked the date on which two of its groundbreaking leaders publicly confessed their movement\u2019s ungovernable anthropological problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":683,"featured_media":101726,"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":"62259327-11c8-4171-aeb5-80f1e66ccf83","beyondwords_preview_token":"3e5354c3-b8a8-4780-87bd-e2b17bdad894","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":[11,21,448],"tags":[],"coauthors":[371],"class_list":["post-101721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-marriage","category-sexuality","pillars-sexuality-and-family"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,683],"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>Gay Pride 2026: Leaders Confessed Losing Control of Their Movement\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pride Month 2026 marked the date on which two of its groundbreaking leaders publicly confessed their movement\u2019s ungovernable anthropological problem.\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\/08\/101721\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Glenn T. 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His latest book is The Myth of the Dying Church.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/GlennStanton\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/author\\\/glenn-stanton\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Gay Pride 2026: Leaders Confessed Losing Control of Their Movement\u00a0 - Public Discourse","description":"Pride Month 2026 marked the date on which two of its groundbreaking leaders publicly confessed their movement\u2019s ungovernable anthropological problem.\u00a0","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\/101721\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Glenn T. Stanton","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/"},"author":{"name":"Glenn T. Stanton","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#\/schema\/person\/c594d9c1e52e5082440b4036c899b555"},"headline":"Gay Pride 2026: Leaders Confessed Losing Control of Their Movement\u00a0","datePublished":"2026-08-25T00:00:17+00:00","dateModified":"2026-08-26T15:45:05+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/"},"wordCount":1444,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_210332798.jpg","articleSection":["Culture","Marriage","Sexuality"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/","name":"Gay Pride 2026: Leaders Confessed Losing Control of Their Movement\u00a0 - Public Discourse","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_210332798.jpg","datePublished":"2026-08-25T00:00:17+00:00","dateModified":"2026-08-26T15:45:05+00:00","description":"Pride Month 2026 marked the date on which two of its groundbreaking leaders publicly confessed their movement\u2019s ungovernable anthropological problem.\u00a0","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_210332798.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_210332798.jpg","width":1400,"height":932,"caption":"gay pride flag"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101721\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Gay Pride 2026: Leaders Confessed Losing Control of Their Movement\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\/c594d9c1e52e5082440b4036c899b555","name":"Glenn T. Stanton","description":"Glenn is the director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family and a regular contributor to World Opinions and The Federalist. He speaks regularly on topics surrounding sociology, anthropology and theology of family and sexuality. His latest book is The Myth of the Dying Church.","sameAs":["https:\/\/x.com\/GlennStanton"],"url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/glenn-stanton\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101721","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\/683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101745,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101721\/revisions\/101745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101721"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101706,"date":"2026-08-23T20:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T00:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101706"},"modified":"2026-08-19T12:30:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T16:30:01","slug":"originalism-and-judicial-decadence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101706\/","title":{"rendered":"Originalism and Judicial Decadence\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Originalism has been an imperfect but salutary method of constitutional interpretation, an effective means, in many cases, of restraining judicial power. Nevertheless, judges face temptations to abuse this power. Nowhere is originalism\u2019s susceptibility to abuse more evident than in the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s Second Amendment jurisprudence. We are now at a watershed for that provision: at its June 29 conference, the Supreme Court consolidated and granted review to two nation-defining cases for its next term. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scotusblog.com\/cases\/viramontes-v-cook-county\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Viramontes <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Cook County<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (from the Seventh Circuit), consolidated with <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grant <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Higgins<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (from the Second Circuit), will be argued and decided by next June on the following issue, with vast implications for public safety: \u201cWhether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is, of course, no secret about how the cases will come out: state-law bans on AR-15s, the most ubiquitous rifle platform in the country (Americans own an estimated 20 to 30 million of them), will be struck down as a violation of the Second Amendment. At that time, Americans will have a newly invented constitutional right to own an AR-15. The problem (for originalism, a crisis) is that the right will have no basis in the Constitution. The consequence is that the scope of democratic control, especially by states, over the regulation of firearms in the interest of public safety will continue to diminish dramatically. In other words, when it comes to the Second Amendment, federalism is a dead letter. \u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">State bans on AR-15s have been working their way through federal courts for some time. In one high-profile case from 2025, the Fourth Circuit, in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Snope <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Brown<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, upheld a Maryland law prohibiting possession of AR-15s. The losing party appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Court <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/24pdf\/24-203_5ie6.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">denied certiorari<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Justices Alito and Gorsuch would have granted certiorari, while Justice Kavanaugh issued a statement in response to, and Justice Clarence Thomas filed a dissenting opinion from, this denial that indicated that they both were eager to hear and reverse the case. Notably, Justice Kavanaugh\u2019s statement was not technically a vote in favor of certiorari; otherwise, the Court would have had the four votes necessary to grant it. Instead, he identified comparable cases in the appellate pipeline that would be better suited to formulating new law.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For its own sake, the Court was shrewd in declining to hear <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Snope <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and waiting for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Viramontes <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grant<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.ca4.162237\/gov.uscourts.ca4.162237.114.0.pdf\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Snope <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">opinion<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, one of the most distinguished conservative federal appellate judges. He is also an outspoken and penetrating critic of the Court\u2019s overreach on gun rights. In applying current Supreme Court precedent to Maryland\u2019s law, Judge Wilkinson reached the judicially modest conclusion that <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Maryland law fits comfortably within our nation\u2019s tradition of firearm regulation. It is but another example of the state regulating excessively dangerous weapons once their incompatibility with a lawful and safe society becomes apparent, while nonetheless preserving avenues for armed self-defense.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This reasonable, coherent result was reached using the Supreme Court\u2019s bewildering standard for evaluating the constitutionality of firearm regulations. In the 2022 case <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/21pdf\/597us1r54_7648.pdf\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass\u2019n., Inc. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bruen<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the Court rejected the traditional standard for individual rights (balancing the state\u2019s interest with the means chosen to protect that interest) and instead promulgated an the easily manipulated, results-driven standard: this was the \u201chistorical tradition\u201d test, a standard that is utterly divorced from contemporary concerns about public safety and any consideration of the astounding lethality of contemporary firearms. For example, on December 14, 2012, twenty-year-old Adam Lanza, after killing his mother at home, walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut with an AR-15. He fired 154 rounds in under five minutes, killing twenty first-grade students, six educators, and himself. These plain facts of mass murder will not (and under <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bruen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, must not) be a factor in the Court\u2019s analysis of Connecticut\u2019s ban on AR-15s in response to this staggering atrocity. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe conclude,\u201d wrote Judge Wilkinson in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Snope<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cthat <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bruen <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">did not mandate an abandonment of our faith in self-governance, leave the balance struck throughout our history of firearms regulation behind.\u201d Alas, Judge Wilkinson will undoubtedly be shown to have been far too optimistic about <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bruen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019s mandate. What is clear already is that self-government and balanced regulation are definitively gone from Second Amendment jurisprudence. The Court aggressively superintends the regulation of firearms in all its complex detail just as it used to oversee abortion regulations in the world it created by <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roe <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wade<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1973. Once it declared an unfettered right to abortion, the Court spent decades ruling on the constitutionality of state regulations like waiting periods, parental notification for minors, and restrictions on late-term abortions. Whatever a coalition of at least five votes agreed on the constitutionality of any regulation, that became the law of the land. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Similarly, with the misbegotten creation in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/07-290\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">District of Columbia <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Heller<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2008) of an individual right to keep and bear arms, and its ahistorical incorporation against the states in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/08-1521\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">McDonald <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> City of Chicago<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2010), the Court became the national review board for firearm regulations, now directed by nothing more than <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bruen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. For instance, last term in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/25pdf\/24-1234_diff_q8l1.pdf\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">United States <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Hemani<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> marijuana smokers were granted Second Amendment protection. Two terms before that, in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/23pdf\/602us1r43_p860.pdf\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">United States <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Rahimi<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, domestic violence perpetrators were found not to have such rights. These decisions are perfectly united in their policy whimsy. Like abortion regulations, whatever position can attract a majority of justices will prevail. Make no mistake: these cases are creating gun policy; the Court is supplanting legislative choices with its own preferences. These are not matters of constitutional interpretation. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has just offered a preview of the Court\u2019s constitutionalization of AR-15 ownership. On July 17, 2026, in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">en banc<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> opinion in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www2.ca3.uscourts.gov\/opinarch\/242415p.pdf\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, Inc. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Attorney General of New Jersey<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, New Jersey\u2019s AR-15 ban, along with the prohibition of large-capacity-ammunition magazines (anything beyond ten rounds), was struck down. Breaking with all other federal courts of appeal that have uniformly upheld the bans on AR-15s, the Third Circuit, in an opinion by President Biden appointee Judge Arianna Freeman, concluded: \u201cTogether, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Heller <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bruen <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">teach that bans or broad prohibitions on possessing or carrying of a class of weapons in common use for lawful purposes fail to find support in our Nation\u2019s tradition of firearm regulation. That is so even when the regulations are passed with the intention of reducing gun violence.\u201d Applying the same analysis, the Court also voided the restriction on magazine capacity. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a matter of public policy, it is now impossible for a legislature to know what to do to thwart Adam Lanza\u2019s inevitable homicidal successors. This decision, to use Judge Wilkinson\u2019s phrasing from the Maryland case, is <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a profound blow to the basic obligation of government to ensure the safety of the governed. Arms upon arms [are] permitted in what can only be described as a stampede toward the disablement of our democracy in these most dangerous of times.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rather than serving as the jewel in the crown of originalism, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Heller <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and its progeny represent instead the decay of this interpretive method into mere judicial willfulness. Indeed, it is a sobering realization that the exercise of power eventually distorts even a methodology that is designed to restrain power and is applied by the Court\u2019s originalists. The promise of originalism is that it will eliminate the turbocharged discretion over policy exercised with such deleterious consequences for self-government by the Warren and Burger Courts. However, with the current Second Amendment jurisprudence, characterized as it is by its freewheeling policymaking, the Court\u2019s originalists have incontestably embraced what Robert Bork called \u201cthe heresy of political judging.\u201d The distressing truth is that Justice William Brennan, Jr., is the animating spirit of the Court\u2019s gun cases.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For gun rights libertarians, the elimination of bans on AR-15s will be a real triumph. Americans will have a constitutional right to own an AR-15. Just as abortion rights activists brushed aside any concern for the common good to maintain unrestricted access to abortion, gun rights activists seek through litigation to dissolve all impediments to the purchase and use of firearms, irrespective of public safety. With these cases, they will have every right to celebrate when this major victory predictably comes. \u201cBut do not celebrate the Constitution,\u201d to adapt Chief Justice John Roberts\u2019s conclusion in his <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/576\/644\/#tab-opinion-3427258\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">memorable dissent<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Obergefell <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">same-sex marriage case in 2015. \u201cIt had nothing to do with it.\u201d Originalism was supposed to show us the way out of this government-by-judiciary mess. With the current Second Amendment jurisprudence, its practitioners on the Court have utterly lost their way. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed<a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/ar-15\/186907121?prev_url=detail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the current Second Amendment jurisprudence, its practitioners on the Court have utterly lost their way. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":397,"featured_media":101711,"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":"572548f5-176d-4ee5-a409-6c791517f5d5","beyondwords_preview_token":"8b01cce8-5282-415f-bd8f-d6bb59d31359","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":[10,2506,1033],"tags":[],"coauthors":[83],"class_list":["post-101706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-constitutional-law","category-courts","category-supreme-court","pillars-politics-and-law"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,397],"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>Originalism and Judicial Decadence\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"With the current Second Amendment jurisprudence, its practitioners on the Court have utterly lost their way. \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\/08\/101706\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gregory J. Sullivan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 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\\\/101706\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101706\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Gregory J. 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When Congress, the executive branch, and the judiciary don\u2019t yield the results that the most politically engaged citizens desire, many decide that our institutional arrangements need to be changed to deliver them. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Twice in living memory (in 2000 and 2016) the winner of an electoral college majority was the choice of fewer individual Americans than his defeated rival. \u201cGet rid of the electoral college,\u201d cry the losers, heedless of whether this is a \u201csolution\u201d worse than the problem they see. Year in and year out, legislation fails to pass the Senate because cloture (the supermajority threshold of sixty senators) was not attained to enable a final vote on many bills. \u201cKill the filibuster!\u201d is heard from the most frustrated partisans. (On this one, I have some sympathy, as I <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2016\/01\/16352\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">said here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> years ago\u2014but \u201ckill it\u201d is not what I\u2019d do.)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another perennial in the garden of institutional reform ideas is \u201cpacking the Supreme Court.\u201d In the left wing of the Democratic Party, this idea was resurrected during and after Donald Trump\u2019s first administration. For ten months in 2016, the Republican majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, had forestalled any action on the Supreme Court vacancy created that February by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Barack Obama\u2019s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to Scalia\u2019s seat was simply ignored, and Donald Trump was able to appoint Justice Neil Gorsuch the following year. Trump then appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony Kennedy in 2018. Finally\u2014with the next presidential election scheduled less than seven weeks after Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2019s death in September 2020\u2014he nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was swiftly confirmed, and appointed just eight days before President Joe Biden defeated Trump\u2019s bid for reelection.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was nothing Republicans had done that Democrats would not likewise have done if they had been similarly situated from 2016 to 2020. Nevertheless, Democrats were furious that Republicans had (in their view) \u201cviolated norms\u201d to <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">de facto<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cpack the Court,\u201d and their response was to demand that this be done <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">de jure<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> during the incoming Biden administration: expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court so that its Republican-appointed majority (now 6\u20133) would become a minority. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">President Biden was not enamored of this idea, and he hit upon a smart way of keeping it at arm\u2019s length. Biden appointed a blue-ribbon commission of legal scholars to study a variety of prominent ideas for \u201cSupreme Court reform,\u201d and put the issue in deep freeze while the commission did its work. Appointed in April 2021, the commission\u2014which had genuine viewpoint diversity\u2014submitted its final report that December. Because of the members\u2019 pervasive disagreements, the lengthy report made precisely zero recommendations, but it makes <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/documents\/final-report-the-presidential-commission-the-supreme-court-the-united-states\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">very instructive reading<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on the pros and cons of every notable suggestion for changing the design of the Supreme Court.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Biden\u2019s \u201cPresidential Commission,\u201d in short, was where he sent the Court-packing idea to die, and he got the result he evidently wanted\u2014until <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Roe<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> v. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wade<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was overturned the following year, and Donald Trump was elected a second time in 2024. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/politics\/policy\/top-democrat-targets-supreme-court-for-changes-60b455ad\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now the idea is back<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, with renewed energy among Democrats who feel frozen out of power in all three branches of the federal government. Win this fall, win in 2028, then pack the Court\u2014that\u2019s the game plan on the left.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This was tried once before, by the most powerful Democratic president of the twentieth century. How did that work out, and what lessons can be learned from Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s failure to expand the Supreme Court in 1937? This is one of the most closely studied episodes of the New Deal, and good treatments have been published recently.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But to understand what moved FDR, a still valuable contemporaneous account is Robert H. Jackson\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (1941), a book I was surprised to learn is very hard to find today, though many university libraries have it. (Here\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/bdhdrjf3\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a signed copy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, if you can afford it.) Jackson had come to Washington as a lawyer at the Bureau of Internal Revenue in 1934, moved to the Justice Department two years later, and ascended the ladder quickly: assistant attorney general, solicitor general, and finally attorney general, the position he held when he published this book. Six months later, he took a seat on the Supreme Court, where he served until his death in 1954.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jackson subtitled his book <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Study of a Crisis in American Power Politics<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and there are several features of interest in it. The first is his lucid, thorough account, from a staunch New Dealer\u2019s perspective, of the \u201ccrisis\u201d brought on by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the early 1930s, as it \u201cnullified\u201d the New Deal in a dozen important cases in FDR\u2019s first term. The second is his equally detailed narrative of the rapid collapse of conservative constitutional doctrines early in Roosevelt\u2019s second term\u2014in Jackson\u2019s view, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the threat of Court-packing\u2014and the consolidation of a more deferential judicial approach to active interventions in the economy by states and the federal government. But the third noteworthy feature, sandwiched between and far less detailed, is his brief account of the president\u2019s Court-packing plan and its failure in Congress. Jackson himself, as an assistant AG, had vigorously defended the plan on Capitol Hill. But here, after the dust had settled, his summary judgment was this: \u201cThe Court\u2019s abuse of its powers had called forth the Court plan; an awakened sense of judicial self-restraint and self-discipline removed its urgent need. And the Court fight became a shadow fight on both sides to save face.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is that the takeaway from a political firefight that consumed about half of 1937? It\u2019s certainly one enduring conclusion: that on the Supreme Court there was a \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3586608\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">switch in time that saved nine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d when Justice Owen Roberts (one of two \u201cswing\u201d votes, with Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes) apparently changed his mind about longstanding interpretations of the due process and commerce clauses, and that this decisively shifted the ground under FDR\u2019s campaign to expand the Court.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Examining this confrontation between a powerful president and the Supreme Court\u2019s conservative majority, one can see gains and losses on both sides. Michael Nelson, a political scientist at Rhodes College, tells the story mostly as a failure on Roosevelt\u2019s part in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/39ms9v29\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vaulting Ambition: FDR\u2019s Campaign to Pack the Supreme Court<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2023), a brisk treatment of about a hundred pages. Nelson structures his analysis around seven decisions FDR made, each of which he considers a misstep to a greater or lesser degree. Among them was that Roosevelt had not campaigned on packing the Supreme Court in 1936, or mentioned the idea in either his pre-inaugural State of the Union address or his inaugural address, but sent a message to Congress with the proposal about two weeks after his second inauguration. What he then proposed was that, for every justice at least seventy years of age who did not retire within six months of the law\u2019s enactment, the president would be authorized to nominate and appoint an additional justice, up to six such justices (for a maximum Court of fifteen). Since there were, in February 1937, exactly six justices already over seventy, Roosevelt would have had\u2014say, by Christmas\u2014exactly six appointments to the Supreme Court (filling either vacated or new seats, or some of each). For months the political conversation in the country had included lots of reform ideas, including expansion of the Court, but, Nelson argues, the president\u2019s decision to keep the plan under wraps and then spring it on Congress as a full-blown legislative proposal was deeply imprudent.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Undeniably a misstep was FDR\u2019s disingenuous initial case for his proposal: that the aging justices needed a complement of younger colleagues to handle their workload. This was demonstrably false, and a powerful rebuttal came in a letter from the chief justice himself, presented by a friendly senator to the Senate Judiciary Committee in late March. By then, though, Roosevelt had already changed his tune, arguing on two occasions in early March that the real problem to be solved by his plan was the misguided jurisprudence of the Supreme Court\u2019s old guard.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now the issue was joined straightforwardly. Who was right about the interpretation of the Constitution, the Court\u2019s conservative majority\u2014or the justices in the minority, and the president who wanted more like them? But perhaps more importantly, even if the president was right, was this the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">right way<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to bring about a change in the Court\u2019s decision-making? Some of the leading figures representing a more liberal jurisprudence\u2014such as Justice Louis Brandeis, and Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter, who would be appointed a justice by FDR in 1939\u2014thought the president\u2019s course of action was a mistake. Others, such as Princeton\u2019s Professor <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/2teb3pjx\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Edward Corwin<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, backed FDR\u2019s play all the way. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 1936 reelection landslide had given Roosevelt\u2019s Democrats more than 75 percent of the seats in each house of Congress. But would the members do their party chief\u2019s bidding? Not enough of them, especially if their constituents saw the president\u2019s effort as an attack on judicial independence and integrity. As legal historian Laura Kalman shows in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/jrjnphnj\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">FDR\u2019s Gambit: The Court Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (2022), a strong counter-campaign to defeat Roosevelt\u2019s proposal was organized by leading figures in American journalism, and the American Bar Association (then still a very conservative organization) came out against it. But it would take every ounce of the opposition\u2019s strength to beat this president.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kalman\u2019s book should now be regarded as the authoritative treatment of this pivotal moment in political and legal history. She is much more sympathetic to Roosevelt than Nelson is, and she convincingly shows, with day-to-day detail, how close-run a thing it was. For all the missteps that Nelson rightly identifies, Kalman demonstrates that FDR nearly pulled it off. Even after a negative report from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the president schmoozed and cajoled members of Congress who offered substitutes and compromises. The plan was not doomed, Kalman argues: a \u201cstate of uncertainty lasted until July,\u201d when Senate majority leader Joseph Robinson, the president\u2019s key supporter (to whom a Supreme Court seat had been promised) suddenly died. After that, the chances of success dimmed rapidly, and a Senate motion to recommit (i.e., to kill the bill) passed overwhelmingly. No serious action ever took place in the House of Representatives.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Politically, the president paid a steep price. Nelson argues that Roosevelt sacrificed comprehensive executive-branch reorganization\u2014arguably more important\u2014with his single-minded focus on Court-packing. FDR\u2019s revenge campaign in the 1938 primaries against Democrats who\u2019d thwarted him came a cropper, and a \u201cconservative coalition\u201d across party lines developed on the Hill. Major New Deal legislation essentially came to a halt for the remainder of his second term.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yet as Robert Jackson said in 1941\u2014and as Kalman argues too\u2014Roosevelt did end up reshaping the Supreme Court and changing the trajectory of its jurisprudence. Yes, there was the Roberts \u201cswitch\u201d\u2014about which a scholarly debate has raged for decades (see, e.g., <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/3muptczn\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">William Leuchtenburg<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y6j93c4h\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Barry Cushman<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), one that Kalman treats fairly in a thorough afterword. But thanks to another piece of legislation more quietly passed in early 1937 that FDR had little to do with, an improved pension package was created for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges (including the \u201csenior status\u201d option), and older justices began to find retirement attractive. With two deaths and three retirements from the Court, the president\u2014who had had no vacancies to fill in his first term\u2014filled five before his second term was over, including three seats that had been occupied by reliably conservative justices. Before his long presidency was over, FDR would make nine appointments to the Court (including the elevation of a sitting justice to chief, and the replacement of one of his own early appointees), filling every seat except that of \u2026 Owen Roberts.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>Don\u2019t tear down a structure whose value is hard to see, and the cost of whose loss is hard to know in advance.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=Don\u2019t tear down a structure whose value is hard to see, and the cost of whose loss is hard to know in advance.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=Don\u2019t tear down a structure whose value is hard to see, and the cost of whose loss is hard to know in advance.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What can be made of all this? I confess a certain sympathy for Roosevelt\u2019s side in this struggle, since I incline more to his view on the jurisprudential questions. And so I\u2019m not sorry that the Court changed direction, whatever the justices\u2019 reasons for doing so. There really was a \u201cconstitutional revolution\u201d in 1937, and viewed in tight focus, that was not a bad thing. Nor was it bad that FDR was soon able to appoint successors to the \u201cFour Horsemen\u201d of the old Court who had rankled him so in his first term\u2014though some of the new justices would later be responsible for novel and in some cases far worse species of judicial activism.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it is also a decidedly not-bad thing that Franklin Roosevelt failed to achieve his object <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by the means he pursued<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The Constitution permits Congress to set the number of Supreme Court justices, and so, compared to other reform ideas (like term limits) that arguably require a constitutional amendment, Court-packing seems an easy fix for frustrated partisans. But of all our major institutions, the Supreme Court is still performing better, more reliably, with more integrity, than the presidency or the Congress. I am often disappointed by its rulings; so is everyone I know, though we may be disappointed by different ones. But it is not pervasively corrupt, incompetent, or tyrannical. Expand it for partisan reasons, and where is the stopping point? Here we should be guided by the adage of Chesterton\u2019s fence. Don\u2019t tear down a structure whose value is hard to see, and the cost of whose loss is hard to know in advance.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/search\/images?k=Historic+Supreme+Court&search_type=usertyped&asset_id=390528006\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Of all our major institutions, the Supreme Court is still performing better, more reliably, with more integrity, than the presidency or the Congress. I am often disappointed by its rulings; so is everyone I know, though we may be disappointed by different ones. But it is not pervasively corrupt, incompetent, or tyrannical. Expand it for partisan reasons, and where is the stopping point?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":378,"featured_media":101704,"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":"b725bc04-9b6e-41d0-890f-7b50a0bb3020","beyondwords_preview_token":"b759103f-36e8-4de5-bb39-be45aee81340","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":[2506,1081],"tags":[],"coauthors":[37],"class_list":["post-101696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-courts","category-the-bookshelf","pillars-education-and-culture"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,378],"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 Bookshelf: Packing the Supreme Court\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Of all our major institutions, the Supreme Court is still performing better, more reliably, with more integrity, than the presidency or the Congress. I am often disappointed by its rulings; so is everyone I know, though we may be disappointed by different ones. But it is not pervasively corrupt, incompetent, or tyrannical. Expand it for partisan reasons, and where is the stopping point?\" \/>\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\/101696\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Matthew J. 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Expand it for partisan reasons, and where is the stopping point?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101696\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101696\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101696\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_390528006.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_390528006.jpg","width":1400,"height":859,"caption":"SCOTUS"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101696\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Bookshelf: Packing the Supreme Court\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\/16f09b2a9d95df91b1922681503a6c07","name":"Matthew J. Franck","description":"Matthew J. Franck is Senior Contributing Editor of Public Discourse. He is also a visiting Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University, Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, where he chaired the department and taught courses in political philosophy, constitutional law, and American politics. Franck has written, edited, or contributed to books published by the University Press of Kansas, Lexington Books, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press, and has published articles and reviews in\u00a0American Political Thought, the\u00a0Review of Politics, the\u00a0Journal of Church and State, the\u00a0Catholic Social Science Review,\u00a0National Affairs,\u00a0The New Atlantis,\u00a0First Things, the\u00a0Weekly Standard, Touchstone, the\u00a0Claremont Review of Books,\u00a0National Review, and\u00a0Public Discourse. On Twitter he is @MatthewJFranck.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/mfranck\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101696","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\/378"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101696"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101720,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101696\/revisions\/101720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101696"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101689,"date":"2026-08-19T20:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T00:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101689"},"modified":"2026-08-18T13:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T17:06:11","slug":"sexually-free-emotionally-numb-young-adult-women-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101689\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexually Free, Emotionally Numb: Young Adult Women in 2026\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many social observers have noticed the malaise affecting young <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ifstudies.org\/report-brief\/americas-demoralized-men-part-1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">American men<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Women, however, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC12385385\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">do not seem to be faring much better<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It is true that women report higher educational successes and lower rates of addiction or acute despair than men. Nonetheless, in the relationships department, they broadly fail to obtain the happy endings that romantic comedy films and television shows have promised them. And they seem to have given up searching for it. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Almost thirty years ago, American bioethicist Leon Kass <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalaffairs.com\/public_interest\/detail\/the-end-of-courtship\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">wrote a sentence<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that rings truer today than it did then: \u201c[M]ost young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused: hoping for something more, they are not enjoying their hard-won sexual liberation as much as liberation theory says they should<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My own work and experience, sadly, confirms Kass\u2019s observation.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>A Generation Still Aching for Marriage and Meaning<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Between July 2025 and January 2026, our research team at the Austin Institute interviewed fifty-two unmarried men and women between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five. We asked them questions about their families of origin, past and present romantic and sexual relationships, views on marriage and childbearing, and desires to settle down. Notwithstanding their diverse backgrounds and beliefs, our interviews of twenty-nine women revealed that this cohort keeps dreaming of the married life. More than two thirds of them stated it clearly: they want to be married at some point. \u201cI think that\u2019s important for me to grow up in a house [where parents] love each other and I would not want to have kids before getting married,\u201d one woman said. In the words of a more traditional single woman, \u201cmarriage is also the stepping-stone to … building a family. And I do believe a lot in the institution of family, for sure, because of the safety and the belongingness that a family will provide.\u201d Only one of them was clearly opposed to the idea of marriage, with the remaining six being ambivalent or unsure, but unwilling to rule out marriage entirely. The Austin Institute\u2019s \u201cRelationships in America 2025\u201d nationally representative survey data offer a similar picture, with only 10 percent of young adult women strongly agreeing that \u201cmarriage is outdated.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Though these women largely downplayed the importance of the marriage <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">covenant, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">they seemed to be aware of the emotional, legal, and financial benefits attached to the legal <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">contract. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And they seem to welcome the prospect of this permanent bond and the personal and financial security it provides. (With the \u201cthe logistics of living in this world, it would also be very nice and helpful to get through it with someone,\u201d one interviewee mentioned.) One participant voiced her desire for a prenuptial agreement as a preventive measure: \u201cI would be happy with [a prenup], and I would honestly be the one to suggest it.\u201d Having witnessed the distress that her parents\u2019 divorce caused her family, she seemed to desire some security in the likely event her marriage would end; this was her implied belief (\u201cI would 100 percent have a prenup just to make it easier,\u201d she remarked). Another participant\u2014polyamorous, nonbinary, and proudly unconventional<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">conceded, too, that she could still envision marrying her boyfriend, who she described as a potentially great father and \u201ckind of more traditional than I am<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d perhaps in a pagan wedding ceremony. Lastly, a lesbian woman said she would consider marriage too, though only in the next ten or fifteen years, and only if her partner wanted children. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Overall, the data show that most women still desire a stable, long-term relationship\u2014what <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">we<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> may still think about as marriage. Though not even the Catholic women cared about the marriage ceremony or sacramental validity, they still expressed a desire for lifelong partnership, and more than half wanted children, too. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They still, however, expressed a strong desire to focus on their own goals and interests. \u201cI would like to graduate from law school before getting married or engaged. I would like to, like, have a real job, like my career, something that is salaried,\u201d reported one participant. Or, as a thirty-year-old woman said, \u201cI feel like another good decade by myself is good, maybe five to ten years.\u201d In other words, whether currently dating or not, these young adult women do not prioritize their partners or their relationships more generally. During their most fertile years, they overwhelmingly consider their sexed and generative natures as something to be managed or prevented while pursuing other goals and priorities<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indeed, while all of them knew how to avoid babies, real attention to, or concern about, their sexed bodies, especially their fertility, wasn\u2019t reported. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>More Sex; Meaningless Sex<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the time of the interview, more than 80 percent of the women had had sex. Thirteen of them lost their virginity before turning eighteen, and eleven after, with a common answer being by the \u201cend of high school.\u201d More than 60 percent of them had had intercourse with five or more people thus far in their lives; 45 percent with ten or more. With only one exception, losing their virginity before college was correlated with the absence of a stable and protective father figure (for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to divorce). Notably, the correlation between not wanting children and coming from a broken home was particularly strong. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Though these women were sexually active and reported eventually wanting a stable family and home, their early twenties were not focused on either finding or nurturing a loving relationship. Only two women reported that their sexual encounters were always in the context of a romantic relationship. During college, we learned, sex is not so much part of a relationship as it is part of a script. Like a gym membership, or a Netflix subscription, sex is <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">what people do <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(and expect you to do, too), while laying the foundation for a free and autonomous life. A commonly reported reason for starting to have sex was mimicking what everyone else was doing. No one spoke of succumbing to irresistible passions. Without exception, and notwithstanding all these sexual partners, our interviewees had kept their focus on career plans, personal growth, and traveling. None mentioned moving or choosing a particular career to increase their chances of either meeting a spouse or pursuing work that is better suited to a future family life. Romance and stable relationships, although desired, were mere eventualities. Family did not need to be prioritized nor planned for. In their view, the opportunity to settle down will and should simply \u201chappen,\u201d just like sex. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If this is what sex (and relationships) have become, however, most older women would not want to live the much celebrated \u201csexual liberation\u201d of these twenty- and thirty-year-olds. Rather than feeling \u201cliberated,\u201d the so-called \u201cgentler sex\u201d seems to be following new social expectations\u2014those of meaningless sex. As one participant said (and others implied): \u201cI went on dating apps and ended up having sex because that is what everyone else was doing.\u201d Another woman said that it was the peer pressure from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">other women<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that led her to have sexual encounters in high school, and to do so with men even though she had always known she liked girls and still considers herself a lesbian. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Most of these women\u2019s first sexual encounters weren\u2019t memorable, let alone romantic. Their accounts were further evidence that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2022\/03\/17\/sex-ethics-rethinking-consent-culture\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cconsent\u201d alone is not enough<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to constitute a meaningful romantic relationship.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boomers who bought the lies of movies like \u201cDirty Dancing,\u201d where premarital sex ends up being the start of a wonderful and powerful love story, thought that sexual liberation and love would be allies. These women\u2019s accounts of sex, however, tell us a different story. Unlike those of their Hollywood counterparts, these women\u2019s first sexual encounters were often mechanical and soulless, deprived of that magic tension, that sense of mystery that belongs in a committed romantic relationship. Based on their accounts, sex is now a mere pursuit of physical pleasure, one more way to avoid boredom, and at times, a mere social expectation. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>The Fertility Trap<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Among our sexually active heterosexual interviewees, all but one were on birth control at some point in their lives, and more than half of them reported that they currently use some form of contraception. More than 60 percent of the women were also in favor of abortifacient options like Plan B and medical or surgical abortions as means of preventing childbirth. Notably, women who opposed abortion were motivated by their religious views. In other words, neither current Texas laws nor biological facts about embryos were as relevant as their personal beliefs in this realm. Equally interesting is how the most highly educated participants were also less inclined to be on the Pill and proved to be more familiar with what years of hormonal intake can do to a woman\u2019s body. Once again, it is the less educated and poorer women\u2014those some feminists wished to help by giving them access to \u201csafe, legal, and rare\u201d abortions and, of course, to contraceptives\u2014who will continue to pay the price of this \u201ccheapened\u201d version of sex.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What national data still indicate, and our interviews confirm, is that many empowered American women tend to forget about their embodied and generative natures during the most fertile period of their lives. In their twenties, they care about their GPAs and landing an optimal job. And it is only when the biological clock can\u2019t be snoozed any longer that they worry about finding the right partner with whom to have children. As a result, an ever-growing number of career women are and will be investing large sums of money in fertility services in the hope that their bodies can enlarge their reproductive windows. Currently, 14 percent of American women of reproductive age will <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/books\/NBK620440\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">need some fertility treatment<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, defined as any medical help to get pregnant or to prevent pregnancy loss. Here, too, there is a socioeconomic gap. For context, one IVF cycle in the U.S. is around $23,000. Only one in four Americans have insurance plans that will cover it. Again: this <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">sexual liberation<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> didn\u2019t help everyone equally (if anyone at all). <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sadly, many of these women will eventually need to make peace with the fact that we only reap what we sow. Having invested more in college and personal growth than in healthy and committed relationships, they may get and keep good jobs\u2014but without a husband or children toward whom that comfortable income might be directed. According to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ifstudies.org\/blog\/the-share-of-never-married-americans-has-reached-a-new-high\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a study of Census data from 2018<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a record high 35 percent of Americans had never been married by age fifty. Since then, we\u2019ve slipped more. A parallel estimate based on our 2025 study puts it at 41 percent. In 2024, 15 percent of American women were <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/magazine.wellesley.edu\/issues\/winter-2026\/where-are-the-babies\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">childless<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by age fifty. At the same time, the percentage of childless women of reproductive age <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/carsey.unh.edu\/publication\/factors-contributing-demographic-cliff-more-us-women-childbearing-age-fewer-have-given-birth\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">continues to grow<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Few of the women we spoke with seemed content with their lives. Half reported having experienced either anxiety or depression at some point in life. Most of the in-person interviewees reporting these problems (ten out of fourteen) had taken antidepressants. It is worth noting, moreover, that eleven out of these fourteen women came from broken or unstable homes. For the most part, they also seemed uninterested in the sources of their own mental discomfort, giving the impression that mental health problems are just a normal part of being young, female, and single in 2026. In other words, it was not just that taking medications for mental distress is an accepted reality. Mental distress itself seems to be taken for granted. This is a sobering reality for the wealthy West. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>A love that requires unwavering commitment is more fulfilling and pleasurable than sex, and family life is far more rewarding than any extended vacation.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=A love that requires unwavering commitment is more fulfilling and pleasurable than sex, and family life is far more rewarding than any extended vacation.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=A love that requires unwavering commitment is more fulfilling and pleasurable than sex, and family life is far more rewarding than any extended vacation.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><b>The Happiness Gap<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In truth, most women in the sample did not strike us as happy, most especially when single, with those in committed relationships and headed toward marriage faring better than all. This is revealing. During one\u2019s most youthful and productive years, and especially in the case of women who have full autonomy over how to structure their working and personal lives, some measure of excitement and a certain spark might reasonably be expected. Yet, where life was not shared, no such spark or excitement was apparent. A few of them even became emotional at some point in the interview. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based on our survey data, around 30 percent of women say they are \u201cvery happy,\u201d and 40 percent \u201csomewhat happy.\u201d Based on the in-person impressions, however, young adult women overwhelmingly looked and sounded as if they were lacking something. In this respect, we may wonder if \u201chappiness\u201d itself has come to mean something different for younger people. Perhaps the kind of \u201cjoy\u201d that \u201csurprised\u201d C. S. Lewis is slowly disappearing from the spectrum of experienced or even longed-for emotions. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rarely did these women speak of having close friends. Assuming we are social and relational beings, we may thus wonder whether therapy and medications are replacing the support that friendship and community once supplied. Just like the word \u201cfriend\u201d was rarely uttered, so, too, were \u201clove\u201d and \u201cfamily.\u201d These last two words may nonetheless be the easiest, cheapest, and firmest solution to the sadness, loneliness, and confusion that young single women experience. Even in our small cohort, the happiest women were those who were engaged to get married. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A love that requires unwavering commitment is more fulfilling and pleasurable than sex, and family life is far more rewarding than any extended vacation. What young women may need, then, is a world that reclaims what our grandparents had\u2014clearer familial roles, a stronger sense of purpose, and the mutual and diverse contribution of both men and women to the family’s flourishing and wellbeing. They need the world that Leon Kass so well described in his 1997 essay \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/commentary\/the-end-of-courtship\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The End of Courtship<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The earlier forms of courtship, leading men and women to the altar, understood these deeper truths about human sexuality, marriage, and the higher possibilities for human life. Courtship provided rituals of growing up \u2026 disciplined sexual desire and romantic attraction, provided opportunities for mutual learning about one another’s character, fostered salutary illusions that inspired admiration and devotion, and \u2026 taught the inter-generational meaning of erotic activity. It pointed the way to the answers to life\u2019s biggest questions: Where are you going? Who is going with you? How\u2014in what manner\u2014are you both going to go? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back then, Kass had no hope for rapid change. He was right: things only got worse. Thirty years later, however, we can nurture some hope. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our hope rests neither on numbers nor on projections. It stems from those dull accounts, from a deep dissatisfaction showing us that the human heart desires more than degrees and careers, much more than lustful and fleeting pleasures. Circumstances change, mores too; but human nature does not. Just like Adam felt lonely without Eve, and just like Rachel cried out to God in her barrenness, men and women will continue to look for each other and eventually meet. Joyfully, then, they will bear fruit.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/sad-young-beautiful-woman-sitting-on-the-window-at-home-isolated-watching-out-coronavirus-quarantine-concept\/331624672?prev_url=detail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just like Adam felt lonely without Eve, and just like Rachel cried out to God in her barrenness, men and women will continue to look for each other and eventually meet. Joyfully, then, they will bear fruit.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1078,"featured_media":101692,"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":"0ca13b35-a038-470b-bfe0-c7eb268ee683","beyondwords_preview_token":"c1c65f5e-7a7b-4251-b7cc-6497121897e3","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":[2575,448],"tags":[],"coauthors":[866],"class_list":["post-101689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-romance-and-relationships","category-sexuality","pillars-sexuality-and-family","pillars-the-human-person"],"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>Sexually Free, Emotionally Numb: Young Adult Women in 2026\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Just like Adam felt lonely without Eve, and just like Rachel cried out to God in her barrenness, men and women will continue to look for each other and eventually meet. Joyfully, then, they will bear fruit.\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\/08\/101689\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Marianna Orlandi\" \/>\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\\\/101689\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Marianna Orlandi\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/1771a4124edacfc975c57783edd38283\"},\"headline\":\"Sexually Free, Emotionally Numb: Young Adult Women in 2026\u00a0\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-20T00:00:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2519,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/AdobeStock_331624672.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Romance and relationships\",\"Sexuality\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/\",\"name\":\"Sexually Free, Emotionally Numb: Young Adult Women in 2026\u00a0 - Public Discourse\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/101689\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/AdobeStock_331624672.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-20T00:00:14+00:00\",\"description\":\"Just like Adam felt lonely without Eve, and just like Rachel cried out to God in her barrenness, men and women will continue to look for each other and eventually meet. 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Its fifth instalment, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">had the all-time second-highest opening weekend for an animated film, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/box-office\/toy-story-5-box-office-opening-weekend-record-franchise-1236786574\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">grossing $160 million domestically and $152 million internationally.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> It\u2019s now <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/box-office\/toy-story-5-billion-dollar-box-office-1236818437\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the third film of 2026 to hit $1 billion dollars<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and is on track to be the highest-grossing film in the beloved franchise. Rotten Tomatoes Critics <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/toy_story_5\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">gave the film a 94 percent<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, making <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story<\/span><\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicbasics.com\/toy-story-is-now-the-highest-rated-film-franchise-in-rotten-tomatoes-history-and-the-numbers-are-staggering\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the best-reviewed franchise in history<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Part of the secret of the films\u2019 successes is how they continue to stay relevant to the concerns of their audiences. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 3<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">4<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> dealt with growing up and moving on, as its audience was also doing. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5 <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">continues that tradition by addressing parents\u2019 enduring fears of tech and its harmful effects on children. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a kids\u2019 movie, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5\u2019<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">s social analysis is impressively astute. Sometimes it feels like the writers could have read <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/lawliberty.org\/book-review\/what-the-smartphone-hath-wrought\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jonathan Haidt\u2019s\u00a0 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Anxious Generation<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The film opens with the now eight-year-old only child Bonnie struggling to make friends because all the kids she could play with all have iPads (or, as the film calls them, \u201cLilypads\u201d). So her parents give her a Lilypad to help her connect with other children. In the film, Lilypad herself is alive like the other toys in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> universe. And she is motivated to help Bonnie make friends, which she thinks she can do better than Bonnie\u2019s other toys like Buzz and Jessie because all the other kids in the neighborhood are building their friendships online as well rather than playing with toys. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This follows <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.parents.com\/believe-it-or-not-kids-actually-want-to-get-off-their-phones-dr-jonathan-haidt-says-he-has-proof-11872245?\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Haidt\u2019s contention<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that most young people would prefer to be off cell phones and social media, but they can\u2019t because if they do, they will be socially excluded. It\u2019s a collective action problem that requires a collective solution. Early scenes show the doll Jessie looking at all the kids in their homes, not playing with their friends, but staring at screens. Throughout the movie, even when kids or families are hanging out with each other, they\u2019re primarily looking at screens rather than each other. (This leads to one of the best darkly funny jokes in the film, in which the toys run through a house freely and nobody sees them because the whole family in every room is on their devices.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the end of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, both Jessie and Lilypad decide that the problem is not toys or tech: it\u2019s that Bonnie doesn\u2019t have real friends, particularly, the right friends who are good for <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">her<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. So, according to the movie, toys and tech are bad when they keep kids from having the right friends\u2014or match them up with the wrong friends\u2014and they\u2019re good when they facilitate the right friends. Tech, in this sense, can actually be good because it can give you access to a wider group of friends to find the ones that are best for you.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many of the tech struggles the film depicts actually reflect the real data. Bonnie is portrayed as particularly susceptible to screen addiction because she doesn\u2019t already have friends or a wider in-person community. As <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/arthur-brooks-the-saddest-countries-all-speak-english?utm_campaign=email-post&r=2l93j&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MzUwNzk5LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxOTgyNjU3NjIsImlhdCI6MTc3OTExNzg1NSwiZXhwIjoxNzgxNzA5ODU1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMjYwMzQ3Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.FvGHODpoxVJJ3YdcvsiIb5qCpxvnsBh6wa_RAqJ2Zfk&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">author and happiness expert Arthur Brooks notes<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, non-Western countries are not seeing nearly the same harms from devices that Western countries are. He argues that this is because these groups still have more robust in-person communities than Western countries do, where local community is steadily breaking down. Western social institutions like the family and the church started to collapse long before the advent of smartphones, as Robert Putnam notes in his famous book <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bowling Alone.<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This also may explain why American conservatives <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/conversationswithtyler.com\/episodes\/jonathan-haidt-anxious-generation\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have resisted smartphone-related mental health decline<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">much better than liberals<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It is largely because they\u2019ve <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/articles\/why-conservatives-are-happier-than-liberals\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">retained the community benefits<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of institutions like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ifstudies.org\/blog\/the-growing-link-between-marriage-fertility-and-partisanship\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">religion and family<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Haidt puts it bluntly: \u201cW<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hen kids are rooted in communities, they don\u2019t get washed out to sea by the phone-based childhood.\u201d But <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brooks puts it more positively: \u201cIf we use the technology to complement our in-person relationships, all the better; if we use it to substitute for in-person relationships, not so good.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The solution <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> proposes is actually <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/religionunplugged.com\/news\/gen-z-revival-fragmented-and-not-just-religious\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">what Gen Z has already started doing on its own<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The last couple of years have seen a Gen Z-led revival of movie theaters, bookstores, running clubs, churches, and numerous other flesh-and-blood communities and affinity groups. What makes this \u201creturn to in-person life\u201d different is that people are using social media to determine their interests and identities, then actively seeking other people like them in the real world. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The problem with Gen Z\u2019s solution, though, is that it\u2019s still using the internet as the starting point for community. People go online, determine their interests, do some Googling, and select the communities to which the algorithm leads them. The virtual world, and the underlying assumptions it feeds (i.e., that they should curate a community based on their unique and individualized interests and preferences), is still the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">foundation <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of a social life, and in-person relationships are the superstructure. This is inherently more fragile than community where real-life, incarnational, organically-produced human relationships are the foundation. That\u2019s one reason studies show that, typically, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ifstudies.org\/blog\/couples-around-the-world-who-met-in-real-life-are-happier-than-those-who-met-online\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">couples who met offline are happier than those that met online<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Churches create a common worship that pulls people together across socioeconomic and ideological differences. This is why sociologist Ryan Burge notes in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/religionunplugged.com\/news\/what-is-happening-in-churches-and-america-this-book-explains-it-all\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Vanishing Church<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that the church has the best track record of bringing people together. And it is why sociologist Jean Twenge wrote in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Generations<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ca.thegospelcoalition.org\/columns\/ad-fontes\/generations-by-jean-m-twenge-review-and-reflections\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">social media is one of the biggest drivers of young people away from church<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It also contributes to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/family\/archive\/2021\/01\/why-parents-and-kids-get-estranged\/617612\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the redefinition of love as agreement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that is causing <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/theweek.com\/culture-life\/no-contact-family-estrangement\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a rise in family estrangement<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> when parents don\u2019t agree with their children on politics, religion, or anything else. That\u2019s one reason Haidt speaks in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Anxious Generation <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of social media as anti-church: because it is built to cater to increasingly hyper-specified tastes and preferences, pulling them further apart from others who don\u2019t share them.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>The problem with Gen Z\u2019s solution is that it\u2019s still using the internet as the starting point for community.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=The problem with Gen Z\u2019s solution is that it\u2019s still using the internet as the starting point for community.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=The problem with Gen Z\u2019s solution is that it\u2019s still using the internet as the starting point for community.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5 <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">treats this gradual fracturing as a feature, not a bug. Lilypad can find the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">right<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> people for Bonnie that fit <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">her<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> personality specifically. I can see how this is attractive; the internet has led me to many like-minded friends I probably would not have met otherwise. But there\u2019s no acknowledgement that, over time, Lilypad might transform Bonnie into someone who is too individualized to fit with anyone. At the end of the movie, Lilypad and Jessie team up and find the perfect friend who\u2019s exactly like Bonnie and unite the two. It seems, in this happy ending, that Bonnie\u2019s new friend was custom made, made \u2013to order, curated to cater to her hyper-individualized needs, almost like this friend was more AI than human. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s something sinister about how <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> frames Lilypad. She sincerely wants to give Bonnie friends, and her only mistake is choosing the wrong ones. But in the movie, the greatest harm comes from those human girl bullies, not the tech. Humans are the problem, in this film world. They\u2019re bad; the tech is innocent. But in the real world, tech companies\u2019 priority isn\u2019t to find kids friends: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/by-invitation\/2026\/04\/29\/stop-big-tech-from-making-users-behave-in-ways-they-dont-want-to\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it\u2019s to keep them on the screen as long as possible.<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That\u2019s how they make money.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s also something sadly fitting about how Bonnie is an only child. In the real world, fewer and fewer Americans are having kids, and when they do have them, they\u2019re having fewer. This means the default in-person communities we are born into are becoming smaller and smaller. As economist Catherine Pakaluk recently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/06\/29\/opinion\/siblings-families-shrinking.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">wrote<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, \u201cWe have a word for children without parents: orphaned. We have a word for those who lose a spouse: widowed. There is no single word in English for growing up without siblings; until now, we\u2019ve rarely needed one.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We live in a world where we aren\u2019t dropped into a network of families, churches, schools, and local communities that form the basis of our shared lives. We must create these networks on purpose; we have to seek out third spaces where we can meet people with whom to form strong ties. It\u2019s only <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">after<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> we can successfully achieve this that tech will become a healthy part of an already full life, a means of enhancing our human dignity and leading us to flourishing. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Toy Story 5 <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">should be applauded for showcasing both the harms and benefits of screens in a child\u2019s life. But parents should not think their children will be just fine as long as they use technology \u201cthe right way.\u201d It will take a stronger real-life community than a purely online one to help children flourish in community with others, to live well with them and alongside them, to know and authentically encounter one another. Then, and only then, will the Lilypads of the world be good for the Bonnies.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed via Alamy.<\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><i>Toy Story 5<\/i> should be applauded for showcasing both the harms and benefits of screens in a child\u2019s life. But parents should not think their children will be just fine as long as they use technology \u201cthe right way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2710,"featured_media":101680,"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":"cd0c5463-b54c-4d56-ac01-6418f750ddf6","beyondwords_preview_token":"60b95db6-176b-4d99-976b-b038e09af06d","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":[2678],"class_list":["post-101679","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":[1291,2710],"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>What Toy Story 5 Gets\u2014and Misses\u2014about Screen Time for Kids\u00a0 - Public Discourse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Toy Story 5 should be applauded for showcasing both the harms and benefits of screens in a child\u2019s life. 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But parents should not think their children will be just fine as long as they use technology \u201cthe right way.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101679\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101679\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101679\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/3DEB09T.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/3DEB09T.jpg","width":1400,"height":753,"caption":"Toy Story 5"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101679\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What Toy Story 5 Gets\u2014and Misses\u2014about Screen Time for Kids\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\/3367813f034813198204031af8f8706e","name":"Joseph Holmes","description":"Joseph Holmes is a film and culture critic, filmmaker, and cohost of The Overthinkers podcast living and working in New York City. He has written for outlets like Forbes, First Things, Christianity Today, World Magazine, Relevant, Law & Liberty, Religion & LIberty, and Religion Unplugged. Joseph specializes in examining the intersection of faith, culture, and movies. His feature film, Jim vs the Future, is available on streaming now.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/joseph-holmes\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101679","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\/2710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101682,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101679\/revisions\/101682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101679"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101668,"date":"2026-08-17T20:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T00:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101668"},"modified":"2026-08-17T09:57:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T13:57:26","slug":"detours-on-the-road-to-wisdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101668\/","title":{"rendered":"Detours on the Road to Wisdom\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Francis Collins led the Human Genome Project, headed the National Institutes of Health for twelve years, founded BioLogos, and is a devout, practicing evangelical Christian. Few figures in American public life combine scientific accomplishment and sincere Christian faith at that level. In <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Road-Wisdom-Truth-Science-Faith\/dp\/0316576301\/r\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Road to Wisdom<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Collins argues that our cultural crisis is fundamentally an epistemological one, a collapse of trust in mainstream media and institutions. We lack wisdom, he declares\u2014and who could disagree? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Collins claims that wisdom contains four essential ingredients: truth, science, faith, and trust. There is a certain paradox here. Collins\u2019s fourfold prescription is considerably more problematic than he suggests. But the path to wisdom is much simpler than he proposes: not a better method for vetting experts, but the cultivation of humility in the seeker. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What follows is not an indictment of Dr. Collins, whose leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic saved countless lives. His treatise serves as a helpful springboard for a continuing conversation about what truly is \u201cthe road to wisdom.\u201d What are perhaps lacking in his analysis are two major issues: first, that the case for science skepticism is much stronger than he allows; second, that humility <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on the part of the observer<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is fundamental to all other elements.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Science: A Source of Wisdom (Except When It Isn\u2019t)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Much of Collins\u2019s treatise is a defense of science as a source of wisdom. He decries a common (though not pervasive) skepticism of science among religious conservatives. But he overlooks the many reasons skepticism may be warranted, regardless of one\u2019s political orientation.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Collins poses the question, \u201cDo scientists always deserve our trust?\u201d and, in a rather paltry three pages, concedes rare instances of scientific misconduct. But the grounds for skepticism extend much further. Only by admitting and understanding tremendous failures of the last hundred or more years can we wisely navigate between the Scylla of blind trust and the Charybdis of reflexive mistrust. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What were some of those failures? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most structural problem is one John Ioannidis identified in his landmark paper, \u201c<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosmedicine\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pmed.0020124\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why Most Published Research Findings Are False<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d\u2014the most downloaded paper in the history of PLOS (Public Library of Science). The entire scientific enterprise is biased toward new and positive findings. Negative results go unpublished. Replication goes unfunded. The problem isn\u2019t occasional misconduct; it\u2019s the normal operation of a system with misaligned incentives. Funding pressures, political pressures, and editorial bias further sway the scientific enterprise away from the pursuit of objective truth.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A fuller accounting of science\u2019s limitations might include what many would consider major missteps that continue into the present. For example, generations of clinicians, scientists, and laypeople were raised on the research of Sigmund Freud and Alfred Kinsey. Both advanced theories that sexual constraints were socially constructed and unscientific, that deviant behavior was the rule rather than the exception, and that personal fulfillment is found in sexual license. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2017\/12\/sigmund-freud-fake-charlatan-liar\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Freud<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> was more philosopher than scientist; his interpretations were more imaginative than empirical. History has been harsher to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Alfred-C-Kinsey-Public-Private\/dp\/0393040860\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kinsey<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: his study populations consisted largely of prisoners and sex offenders, his methods were crude and unethical, and his personal conduct would today be prosecuted rather than celebrated. Scientific organizations have offered almost no acknowledgment that they were wrong\u2014and not just in hindsight. Red flags were present from the start.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Opiate narcotics were once widely understood to be highly addictive. That consensus eroded in the early 1990s as a movement gained traction to treat pain more aggressively. A new belief took hold: that addiction from prescribed opiates was actually quite rare. There was never any evidence for this, and considerable evidence to the contrary. The wildfire was unwittingly sparked by a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/web-wp.archive.org\/web\/20250512123639\/https:\/www.nejm.org\/doi\/full\/10.1056\/NEJM198001103020221\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">five-sentence letter<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to the editor in the 1980 <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">New England Journal of Medicine<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which noted that addiction seemed rare in hospitalized patients receiving low doses under direct supervision. That letter was cited, then those citations were cited, snowballing into a false consensus. Almost 218,000 Americans died from prescription opioids between 1999 and 2017, the annual fatality rate rising 400 percent over the same period.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most recent example of \u201cunscientific science\u201d is pediatric gender transition. Until the early 2010s, pediatric gender dysphoria was exceptionally rare, specialists acknowledged that most would grow out of it, and watchful waiting was the standard of care. Over a brief period of years, more and more centers began to apply the \u201cDutch Protocol,\u201d a highly investigational, controversial, and unvalidated treatment involving puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones administered to adolescent and preadolescent children. By the early 2020s, an increasing number of Western democracies began to backtrack on the practice. Major nonpartisan critical reviews of the practice, such as the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/ukgwa\/20250310143933mp_\/https:\/cass.independent-review.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/CassReview_Final.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cass Report<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (UK) and the 2025 <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hhs.gov\/press-room\/gender-dysphoria-report-release.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">HHS report<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (U.S.) exposed the weakness of the evidence. It isn\u2019t simply that the practitioners were mistaken, but that they were militant: and remain so.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In these and other instances, tradition was vindicated while medical and scientific institutions demonstrated an entrenched resistance to correction. The mistrust is well-deserved. But lest this read as an indictment of the whole scientific enterprise, I hasten to add that these errors were corrected by <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">better science<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The challenge Collins glosses over is the harder one\u2014not <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">whether<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to trust science, but <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. How does one distinguish the plausible from the implausible when the institutions that should guide that judgment have repeatedly failed? He writes extensively about trust, but that raises the question: how do we know whom to trust?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Collins, the Great Barrington Declaration, and a Missing Mindset<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A particular episode in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Road to Wisdom<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> points to the root of the dilemma. The COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in a context where a certain deserved skepticism was already high, and more so among conservatives than progressives. When the virus hit the U.S. in March of 2020, Francis Collins was Director of the NIH and Anthony Fauci was Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the NIH. American policy guidance didn\u2019t come from either the NIH or the CDC; instead, President Trump appointed a Coronavirus Task Force of sixteen leaders from various fields, headed by Vice President Mike Pence. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By October 2020, the U.S. had evolved into a chaotic patchwork of contradictory policies. Even the White House Task Force was divided, with deep divisions between Scott Atlas, who advocated fewer restrictions, and Collins and Fauci, who favored a more restrictive approach.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That October, the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/gbdeclaration.org\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Great<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Barrington<\/span><\/i> <i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Declaration<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (GBD) was released. A trio of epidemiologists\u2014Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), and Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford)\u2014argued that lockdown policies were causing serious collateral harm and proposed an alternative: focused protection of the elderly and vulnerable, with fewer restrictions on the low-risk population. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Collins\u2019s response to the GBD was visceral. He called the proposal \u201clethally wrong\u201d and \u201cdangerous,\u201d coordinated with Anthony Fauci on a \u201cquick and devastating takedown,\u201d and\u2014writing years afterward\u2014maintains he has \u201cno regrets for the point,\u201d but only for his choice of words. He associates the GBD\u2019s authors with Donald Trump, Scott Atlas, and political opportunists, without engaging their core epidemiological argument. He cites the Swedish experience as a cautionary tale, noting Sweden’s elevated mortality relative to its Nordic neighbors\u2014while omitting the fact that Sweden\u2019s <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldometers.info\/coronavirus\/#countries\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">COVID mortality<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> by the pandemic\u2019s end was proportionally comparable to or lower than that of most of Western Europe, and significantly lower than that of the United States.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What he frames as dangerous and wrong would actually have been the normal way of responding to an epidemic prior to 2020. Collins frames it as a moral dispute, not a scientific one. The more measured response would have been to refute the GBD on scientific grounds, but that wasn\u2019t where things landed.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This type of response is very human. Because of pride, we tend to reconstruct past events in ways that are more self-serving than may be warranted. Collins almost certainly believes his own account\u2014that his response to the GBD was purely scientific, the heated rhetoric notwithstanding.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Apart from memory, pride also makes us resistant to updating our conclusions when new evidence challenges them. Psychologists call this \u201cbelief perseverance.\u201d Collins has had access to COVID mortality data, but has yet to concede the benefit of doubt, even in hindsight. He still frames his certainty as scientific integrity. It may be something else.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The solution to our epistemological crisis is not faith, science, trust, or even necessarily truth. It is the elusive quality known as epistemic (intellectual) humility, the type of humility that admits one could possibly be wrong.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>The solution to our epistemological crisis is not faith, science, trust, or even necessarily truth. It is the elusive quality known as epistemic (intellectual) humility, the type of humility that admits one could possibly be wrong.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=The solution to our epistemological crisis is not faith, science, trust, or even necessarily truth. It is the elusive quality known as epistemic (intellectual) humility, the type of humility that admits one could possibly be wrong.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=The solution to our epistemological crisis is not faith, science, trust, or even necessarily truth. It is the elusive quality known as epistemic (intellectual) humility, the type of humility that admits one could possibly be wrong.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><b>Epistemic Humility: A Crucial Ingredient<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When addressing trust, Collins emphasizes that much hangs on our choice of experts. He advises us to evaluate our sources based on the principles of integrity, competence, aligned values, and humility. Few would disagree. However, Collins\u2019s application of humility is mostly consumer-facing, calling on readers to trust humble sources, without enjoining humility on the part of the reader. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The biggest problem isn\u2019t finding trustworthy sources; it\u2019s that proud people will quite naturally assume that the humblest, most honest, and most competent experts are those who agree with them. And of course people will prefer experts who share their values. But what if those values are wildly off base? The human propensity toward self-affirmation and the nearly <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_cognitive_biases\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">200 named cognitive biases<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> explain why this is a problem. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The root problem, then, isn\u2019t ultimately one of misinformation, but <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">pride<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: \u201cthe beginning of all sin,\u201d according to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/ccel.org\/ccel\/schaff\/npnf105\/npnf105.xii.xxxvii.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Augustine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Pride, properly understood, is a lack of humility, and it afflicts us all. Pride turns mere opinions into certainties. Being wrong can be harmful; but being both wrong <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">certain is much worse. We cannot avoid being wrong. We can avoid being arrogant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This principle applies across all domains. Over the course of a long medical career, I\u2019ve witnessed many medical misadventures. Accidents do happen, but the accidents I\u2019ve observed were not random. The physicians with the highest complication rates always seemed to be the most confident. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Returning to the key element I believe Collins overlooked, Scripture has long taught that the essential prerequisite to wisdom is epistemic humility. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Proverbs%2011&version=NKJV\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proverbs 11:2<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> tells us,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When pride comes, then comes shame; <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But with the humble is wisdom. (NKJV)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elsewhere, we are enjoined:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and depart from evil. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=proverbs%203%3A7&version=NKJV\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proverbs 3:7<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (NKJV)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do not be wise in your own opinion. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=romans%2012%3A16&version=NKJV\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Romans 12:16<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (NKJV)<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What does intellectual humility look like? Acknowledging the limits of our knowledge, experience, and wisdom; admitting the possibility that we could be wrong, and avoiding complacency and self-satisfaction by engaging in a lifelong process of study and growth. Aquinas pointed to it in the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/summa\/3162.htm\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Summa<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, citing Gregory: \u201cA swollen mind is an obstacle to truth, for the swelling shuts out the light.\u201d<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Collins names science as a source of wisdom, a position I share despite its documented failures. On the matter of humility, science has validated 3,000-year-old scriptural admonitions against pride. Research shows that intellectually humble people are <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/swilling.substack.com\/p\/intellectual-humility-reduces-political\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">less polarized<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, more reliable, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/swilling.substack.com\/p\/why-the-humble-get-it-right\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">better thinkers<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC9244574\/pdf\/44159_2022_Article_81.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">healthier<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and, not surprisingly, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC11379209\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">easier to get along with<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Humble people can be corrected. Humble people are curious. Humble people are not complacent about their level of knowledge, and that drives them toward new information and personal growth. All of these traits foster wisdom. And as we grow in wisdom, we come to realize how much we still don\u2019t know, leading to even greater humility. Growing mastery of a domain exposes complexity where the uninformed see only simplicity. Nuance enters the picture.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Genuine humility is the road to wisdom. And growth in wisdom leads to even more humility. It\u2019s a virtuous cycle. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed <a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/anonymous-crowd-of-people-walking-street-wearing-masks-during-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-in-new-york-city-november-2020\/392991580?prev_url=detail\">via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Genuine humility is the road to wisdom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2709,"featured_media":101675,"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":"4a1fe2d5-288e-43ed-a351-b09a040b043f","beyondwords_preview_token":"53983719-a217-4df6-8bd1-5c85e4057fba","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":[2677],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2676],"class_list":["post-101668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medicine-and-medical-ethics","pillars-the-human-person"],"acf":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[1291,2709],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - 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By \u201cpeople,\u201d I think she meant \u201cpoets and scholars of poetry,\u201d since this was a Master of Fine Arts program, but even in that much smaller category, her complaint rings true: people, meaning poetic people, learned people, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">don\u2019t <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">read Petrarch all that much. Even people who are fluent in Dante and Shakespeare and Ariosto are less likely to have read the great <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">poeta d\u2019amore<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The reason why became clear with her next sentence; when I asked her what translation she recommended, she looked at me with disappointment and said, \u201cOh no, there is no acceptable translation of Petrarch. You must read him in the Italian.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This was perhaps ten years ago. In those years, I have not managed to learn to read fluently in Italian, but mercifully, I have at last managed to read Petrarch, thanks solely to the tremendous efforts of the American poet and translator A. M. Juster, whose translation of the complete <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/wwnorton.com\/books\/9781324096498\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere<\/span><\/i><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was published by W. W. Norton earlier this year. I do not know if my mentor has encountered Juster\u2019s translation, or if it has led her to amend her statement, but Juster brings a unique and pleasing spriteliness to the poems, offering an elegant, precise, yet vibrant take on Petrarch\u2019s work. This volume is not merely an excellent translation of an under-read poet; it is a reminder of why Petrarch was so acclaimed in the first place, and an argument that this early Renaissance humanist\u2019s vision of humanity, love, forgiveness, sin, death, and hope can speak directly to our own twenty-first-century hearts. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Petrarch, like my own personal favorite, Rabelais, is one of those strange humanists whose names, in a cruel inversion of the classical model of honor, have outlived any knowledge of their deeds. (Better, many poets might think, to suffer the fate of the author of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beowulf, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">whose name is lost to time but whose work is still on syllabi the world over.) Though Petrarch was a giant of his day\u2014scholar, diplomat, and inventor of the Petrarchan sonnet form\u2014and of the centuries that followed, the themes and even the forms of his work seem ill-suited to contemporary literary taste. He is best known as a hopeless romantic, besotted with the inaccessible Laura; his other major themes are classical virtue and Christian salvation, neither of which has much purchase today. A few people may recognize his name and have a vague association with some other name\u2014Laura, perhaps, or Plutarch, or Shakespeare, depending on their field of study\u2014but Petrarch\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">poems, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">his actual work, have faded almost completely from public consciousness.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With this in mind, Juster\u2019s choice to translate the entirety of Petrarch\u2019s corpus seems strange. The translation is the fruit of the labor of years; all 366 poems are here, along with some thirty pages of detailed notes. Even more demandingly, Juster has chosen to retain the original form of each of the poems, and wherever possible, he seeks to echo the vowel sounds of the original Italian. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Petrarchan sonnets, which Petrarch perfected in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are notoriously difficult to write in English because there are so few rhyming words in English as compared to Romance languages. The Petrarchan form follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA CDCDCD (sometimes CDECDE), meaning that at least two of the end-rhyme sounds must be repeated four times. This is a tall order in English, yet Juster rises to the challenge and delivers sonnet after sonnet of limpid, readable verse in which the rhymes arise naturally from the language, as in the heartwarming sextet from poem 114: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Large crowds and Fortune cause me no concern,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not for myself nor for depravity,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nor do I feel hot passion in or out. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I plead for just two people, and so yearn<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">her heart be humbled and at peace with me;<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I want the other\u2019s foot to heal from gout. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The scale of these labors is Herculean. But on closer inspection, there is an artistic kinship between the two poets that makes it seem inevitable for Juster to undertake this task. Juster is a skilled, highly decorated poet in his own right, a master of a witty formalism that would be very much at home in Petrarch\u2019s Europe, the Europe of troubadours and court poets. He is also, like Petrarch (who studied law and served as a diplomat and statesman) a former lawyer and public servant; Juster served in many positions in the federal government, including as the Commissioner of Social Security, and as an attorney. These biographical parallels contribute, I suspect, to Juster\u2019s fondness for Petrarch, a fondness evident in every line of the book. But the real source of Juster\u2019s fascination with the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I believe,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">goes beyond these biographical parallels, right to the core of what it means to be a human being passing through time. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The structure of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is worth exploring. In true late-medieval\/early-Renaissance fashion, no element of the collection is arbitrary. The total number of poems, 366, alludes to the number of days in a leap year\u2014the maximum amount of time it can take to go around the sun. The story, if you will, of the book is the story of Petrarch the priest and scholar\u2019s love for the beautiful Laura, whom he glimpses for the first time \u201cIn thirteen twenty-seven\u2014the precise \/ first hour of April sixth\u201d (poem 211). Laura goes on to marry another man and dies at a young age, but Petrarch\u2019s love lasts until (at least) the end of his own life decades later. The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is also, however, the story of the poet\u2019s struggle against sin, of his conflicting passion for this world and desire for the world to come. Poems honoring Laura\u2019s face, hair, hands, and movements precede poems describing the beauty of the Italian countryside in vivid, sensual language, which give way to hymns to Our Lady. As Laura ages and falls ill, the verse mourns the decay of the human body; as the poet becomes older and more observant, he laments the intrusion of sin into both the body of the Church and the individual soul (\u201cGirls and old goats cavort in every room, \/ which, for their frolics, Satan has arrayed \/ with bellows, mirrors, and the flames of doom \/\u00a0 [….] May God now smell the stench your life has made!\u201d) Moving from love to loss, youth to age, innocence to recognition of sin, life to the certainty of death, the poems offer ab imaginative vision in which all these things, by God\u2019s grace, are inextricably bound up together and participate in mysterious ways in the salvation of the soul. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In his accessible but scholarly introduction, critic and scholar Andrew Frisardi explains that \u201cthe number 6 is to the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">what the number 3 is to Dante\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Commedia <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[…]. Using standard numerological method, the sum of 3 + 6 + 6 = 15, and 1 and 6 add up to 6 again; Laura\u2019s name in Latin, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Laurea, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has six letters; and so on.\u201d This example gives us a taste of Petrarch\u2019s skill; not only is he writing beautiful verse, but he is doing it with an eye to the whole. The <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">deserves to be read in its entirety, not merely sampled, so that readers can truly appreciate its arc. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s a tall order, of course, to advise a modern reader to pick up 366 fourteenth-century Italian poems and read them in their entirety. But in Juster\u2019s hands, the verse is remarkably fluid and readable, a stream-of-consciousness narrative that is both gripping and gorgeous. As I read, I simultaneously wanted to slow down to savor the verse and to skim through quickly to find out what was going to happen in our hero\u2019s heart and soul next; this tension of the reading experience simulates the tension of life, in which we are so often torn between our desire to stay in the present and our obsession with looking ahead at the future. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Readers unfamiliar with Petrarch (or even many readers quite familiar with Petrarch in other translations) may expect his poetry to be stuffed with archaic language and incomprehensibly flowery flights of fancy. But Juster gives us a Petrarch of lean, direct verse, full of energy and flex, driven by fierce imagery and ringing sounds. Look, for example, at poem 2, in which Petrarch first goes toe-to-toe with Love, the great hunter who will harry him for the rest of the book: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to extract revenges with grace<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and punish countless crimes in just one day,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Love took his bow out in a furtive way<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">like an assassin marking time and place….<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This stanza, the first of a neatly balanced sonnet, is composed all of straightforward words. The syntax is finely crafted but not overwhelmingly complex; the central image is easy to grasp. And yet, the idea\u2014that Love is an assassin, working within the limitations of temporality and space, that Love is a graceful avenger who comes upon us as punishment for our sins\u2014is startling. The rest of the sonnet is action-packed, describing this first encounter between the poet\u2019s willpower and the attacks of Love. The images extend into the next sonnet, in which the poet first encounters Laura, in whose presence <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Love soon discovered me wholly disarmed<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and saw my eyes were routes to reach my heart,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which now are gates and thresholds where tears flow,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and so he gained no honor on his part<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by shooting me that way, for you were armed,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and yet he would not let you see his bow. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The \u201cyou\u201d here is Laura, who disarms the poet utterly, leaving him exposed to the arrows of Love. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The book consists of a mix of forms, including sonnets, sestinas, and canzone. Beyond these forms, however, Petrarch indulged in wordplay and figures of speech from anagrams to hidden words, and in an impressive turn, Juster renders these figures into English. For example, in poem 5, Petrarch buried the words \u201cLaureta laureta,\u201d a pun connecting Laura\u2019s name with the laurel wreath given to victors in battle and to the finest poets. In a flourish worthy of at least a few laurel leaves of his own, Juster translates the sonnet into enjoyable, readable iambic pentameters that follow a traditional Petrarchan sonnet rhyme scheme <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">contain the hidden words (visible in all caps in the text). <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Juster\u2019s careful attention does not diminish as the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">progresses. The active, spirited language of the early poems gives way gradually to starker verse as the poet\u2019s awareness of his own death draws near. The regular pentameters occasionally become plodding tetrameter, as in poem 312:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No stars adrift in peaceful skies,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no ships that slip through tranquil seas,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no fields for well-armed cavalries,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no woods where wildlife runs and flies<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no promise of a long-sought prize<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no love expressed in rhapsodies,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">no fields nor streams where melodies <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of chaste and graceful ladies rise…<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even in Juster\u2019s sparkling verse, Petrarch is not an easy read. He is steeped in the legends and myths of Rome, Greece, and Italy, and well-versed in the Scriptures and the Christian intellectual tradition. His poems are bedecked with references to Ulysses, Babylon, Pallas, the Po and the Arno, Polyclitus and Aeolus and Vulcan. But I do not believe this is why his poems have slipped out of popularity. Poetry with many more (and more obscure) references still enjoys comparative popularity, like Dante\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Inferno. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps Plutarch is no longer popular for the same reason more people read the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Inferno <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">than go on to read the (much superior) <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Purgatorio <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Paradiso: <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because for at least a hundred years, our culture has not known what to do with ardor. The idea of sweeping, uncritical, all-consuming devotion, the ideal that defined Western thought and literature for millennia, now sets our teeth on edge a little; it is so obviously impossible, so clearly unhealthy, that we are vaguely uncomfortable even in proximity to it. Petrarch\u2019s life-long adoration of the much younger and married Laura feels, perhaps, icky to modern readers who have been trained to understand their own sensual desires as only and entirely sexual. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Petrarch, however, there is no dividing spiritual passion from physical passion. They are one and the same impulse, springing from a single source: the unity that is human nature. Juster\u2019s supreme achievement in the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is that he has come to terms with what a poem truly is, and in so doing, he offers us a vision of what a human being truly is, a vision that goes far beyond the petty therapy-speak of contemporary culture. Like a human being, a poem is a composite, a commingling of form and feeling. The poem is, rightly speaking, neither of these things. It is the unity of them. Juster pays homage to that reality and honors Petrarch\u2019s poems both in their bodies (the formal elements) and their souls (the feelings and ideas that invigorate them). This translation of the <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canzoniere <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">enters wholly into the poetic arts, not merely the scholarly arts, for in it Juster has given us a Petrarch in English that lives, moves, and has its being with the same grace, imaginative scope, and formal agility as the original. If, in a hundred years, Petrarch has returned to his rightful place on the bookshelves, tongues, and souls of readers the world over, it will be thanks to the prodigious labors of A. M. Juster.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em><strong>Image licensed<a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/portrait-of-petrarch-and-laura-with-an-epitaph-on-engraving-from-the-1551s\/354518814?prev_url=detail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If, in a hundred years, Petrarch has returned to his rightful place on the bookshelves, tongues, and souls of readers the world over, it will be thanks to the prodigious labors of A. M. 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C. Scharl\",\"description\":\"Jane Clark Scharl is an American poet, playwright, and critic.She is the Executive Editor of\u00a0The Better Part, and Poetry Editor for\u00a0Plough.Her poetry has appeared in many American and European outlets, including the BBC,\u00a0The Hopkins Review, The New Ohio Review, The Hudson Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Lamp, Measure Review, and others. Her criticism has appeared in\u00a0Dappled Things, Fare Forward, Plough Quarterly, and others. Jane has written two verse dramas that are parts I and II of a trilogy published by Wiseblood Books.\u00a0Sonnez Les Matines\u00a0was released in February 2023 and\u00a0The Death of Rabelais\u00a0in October 2025. Her debut poetry collection,\u00a0Ponds, was released by Wipf & Stock Publishers in April 2024. She lives in Detroit with her husband and children.\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\\\/author\\\/j-c-scharl\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Giant on the Shoulders of Giants\u00a0 - Public Discourse","description":"If, in a hundred years, Petrarch has returned to his rightful place on the bookshelves, tongues, and souls of readers the world over, it will be thanks to the prodigious labors of A. M. Juster.\u00a0","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\/101655\/","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"J. C. 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Scharl","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#\/schema\/person\/a57bb074be45091ad3cb5187698fe2f2"},"headline":"A Giant on the Shoulders of Giants\u00a0","datePublished":"2026-08-17T00:00:30+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/"},"wordCount":2277,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_354518814.jpg","articleSection":["Art","Book Reviews","Poetry"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/","name":"A Giant on the Shoulders of Giants\u00a0 - Public Discourse","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_354518814.jpg","datePublished":"2026-08-17T00:00:30+00:00","description":"If, in a hundred years, Petrarch has returned to his rightful place on the bookshelves, tongues, and souls of readers the world over, it will be thanks to the prodigious labors of A. M. Juster.\u00a0","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_354518814.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AdobeStock_354518814.jpg","width":1400,"height":911,"caption":"Petrarch"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101655\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Giant on the Shoulders of Giants\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\/a57bb074be45091ad3cb5187698fe2f2","name":"J. C. Scharl","description":"Jane Clark Scharl is an American poet, playwright, and critic.She is the Executive Editor of\u00a0The Better Part, and Poetry Editor for\u00a0Plough.Her poetry has appeared in many American and European outlets, including the BBC,\u00a0The Hopkins Review, The New Ohio Review, The Hudson Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Lamp, Measure Review, and others. Her criticism has appeared in\u00a0Dappled Things, Fare Forward, Plough Quarterly, and others. Jane has written two verse dramas that are parts I and II of a trilogy published by Wiseblood Books.\u00a0Sonnez Les Matines\u00a0was released in February 2023 and\u00a0The Death of Rabelais\u00a0in October 2025. Her debut poetry collection,\u00a0Ponds, was released by Wipf & Stock Publishers in April 2024. She lives in Detroit with her husband and children.","url":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/author\/j-c-scharl\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101655","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\/2708"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101655"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101661,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101655\/revisions\/101661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101655"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=101655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":101642,"date":"2026-08-13T20:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T00:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/?p=101642"},"modified":"2026-08-13T11:56:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T15:56:25","slug":"liberalism-in-the-u-s-and-the-uk-a-qa-with-lord-nigel-biggar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepublicdiscourse.com\/2026\/08\/101642\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberalism in the U.S. and the UK: A Q&A with Lord Nigel Biggar\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lord Nigel Biggar, CBE, is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He is the author of several books, including (most recently) <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New Dark Age: Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> For the past decade, Lord Biggar has <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/nigelbiggar.uk\/ethics-empire\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">been embroiled in controversies surrounding his efforts to interrogate the ethics of \u201cempire\u201d and, specifically, the British Empire<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The following conversation with his former doctoral student, Matthew Lee Anderson, has been lightly edited for clarity. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Matthew Lee Anderson:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You begin by arguing that the culture wars are real and important. As a frame, \u201cculture war\u201d has governed American public discourse for the last forty years or so. What are the similarities and differences that you see between the American context and the British context? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Nigel Biggar:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I am interested to hear you trace the culture wars in the U.S. back several decades, because it is not something we have talked about in the UK until the last ten years. One reason that you ended up in a culture war over abortion was that the U.S. Supreme Court presumed to make a judgment that, frankly, your legislators should have made. We in the UK passed our first liberal abortion law in 1967, but because the law was passed by Parliament, not by a court, it did not become quite as polarizing. The other reason our culture war came later is that the BBC has a public service duty to present public controversies and manage them in a balanced fashion, giving equal airtime, more or less, to different sides of the debate. We have had institutions that contain these highly controversial issues in a way that the U.S. has lacked. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For us, the culture wars are much more recent concerning three things: colonial history, transgender identity, and the issues of race and racism. The colonial history issue came alive in 2015 and 2016 because of the Rhodes Must Fall agitation in Oxford, which was imported from South Africa, not the U.S. The racism issue exploded here as a direct result of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the upsurge of BLM in the States, which was exploited by professional antiracist bodies here. And transgender questions are all of our own making, really. The racial front of the cultural war was heavily influenced by American controversies, though we are the ones who imported radical race politics from America. But the histories of the culture wars in the two countries are not identical by any means. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> What do you think are the downsides of importing war metaphors into social relationships? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NB:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Would that we did not have to use such an image. But \u201cculture wars\u201d is not a false description of what has befallen us. I learned we had a problem in our universities when, in December of 2017, a group of academics sought to shut down my <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/nigelbiggar.uk\/2017\/12\/24\/responding-to-critics-of-ethics-and-empire\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">research project on Ethics and Empire<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014not to engage me in rational exchange, but to use political leverage to intimidate me, to discourage others from cooperating with me, and to get Oxford to take the project out of my hands. War was brought to my doorstep and, since then, I\u2019ve had to fight it. Yet I\u2019m fighting the war to reestablish what we should all want, which is a \u201cliberal\u201d culture. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know perfectly well the word \u201cliberal\u201d means all sorts of things, particularly in the U.S. In conservative circles, \u201cliberalism\u201d is viewed as a bad thing\u2014to which my response is, well, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">which<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> liberalism? I am a liberal in the sense that I want a culture where we get to say what we believe the truth to be without suffering penalty, and then give each other reasons why we disagree. If we are honest and patient\u2014who knows?\u2014we might reach the truth, or at least get closer to the truth, together. This is the kind of culture that I thought we had, and we need to restore it. So I am fighting a war that was brought to my door in order to get back to a situation where we debate our differences instead of fighting over them. I\u2019m fighting a war for the sake of peace.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But yes, there\u2019s a downside to there being a war, which is that people like me have to spend time fighting for the freedom to say what we think the truth to be, against those who are so convinced of their own grasp of the truth that they think no one else should be allowed to hear what the likes of me has to say. That\u2019s the problem we have. Some people, particularly in the political center, regard the culture wars as something that other people do. In fact, though, moderate people, liberal people, cautious people like me are saying what we think the truth to be and are being attacked. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I don\u2019t think the culture wars are politically inspired fiction; they are real. People like me didn\u2019t create them, but we do need to fight them. Hence, the subtitle of my book, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New Dark Age<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why Liberals Must Win the Culture Wars<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We need to reestablish a culture where we are free to say what we think the truth is, within the law. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Your diagnosis of the progressive left and the emergence of the culture wars involves a story about the postmodernism and postcolonialism that have stripped us of any transcendent, universally binding criteria by which we can assess truth claims, which effectively leaves everything bottoming out in power. Is there anything that Christians might learn from postmodern and postcolonial ways of thinking? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NB: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Postmodernism, of course, can mean a variety of things. But insofar as it means the rejection of modernist hegemony, the rejection of the notion of constant modernizing progress, the rejection of a kind of grand narrative whereby, inexorably, we become ever more rational, more secular\u2014well, the history of the twentieth century exposed that myth. So, the rejection of grand liberal narratives or grand Marxist narratives\u2014I\u2019m in favor of that. As a Christian, I can\u2019t bin grand narratives altogether, because we Christians certainly have a grand narrative of creation, fall, and redemption, that we plug our little lives into. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But within that Christian grand narrative, human beings are creatures and sinners, not gods. Therefore, we have to exercise a certain humility and restraint toward one another. We cannot assume we have the whole truth. We need to listen to each other. So, I am liberal in the sense that I described earlier <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I am a Christian, because of the grand narrative I inhabit. And because of that grand narrative, certain traits like humility and docility and temperance and patience and charity are virtues. They\u2019re not virtues to Nietzsche or Aristotle. So, there is a critique of certain kinds of grand narrative\u2014dogmatic, doctrinaire, ideological grand narratives\u2014that postmodernism rightly makes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As for postcolonialism, I think the nugget of truth I take from that is that those of us who are blessed with\u2014or privileged with\u2014wealth and power, need to be aware that social and economic interests may well deflect and infect our reason. Reason is never pure. It\u2019s always in the service of some interests or others, and some interests may be illegitimate and unjust. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, we need to listen carefully to those who are not so privileged because they may tell us truths we need to hear. By the same token, however, according to my Christian grand narrative, even the unprivileged are sinners and creatures, who also need to be careful not to assume that their interpretation of the causes of the disadvantage or injustice they suffer is correct. They may be wrong. So, everyone needs to listen, even the underprivileged. But yes, the idea that reason can be distorted to serve the interests of the privileged and the powerful is a truth that I take on board. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> This is a highly polemical book. Do you think of it as a prophetic book? And I\u2019m curious what sort of prophetic stance, with respect to the culture war, do you think Christians should or might be able to have? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NB: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tend to suck my teeth when people describe me as being polemical, because I think of polemic as being unbalanced and strident, and I think I\u2019m not that. But I identify certain targets and I don\u2019t pull my punches. Do I think I\u2019m being prophetic? To say so seems to me presumptuous. Other people have to judge that. I just say what I think to be true and important. And although I\u2019m not someone who likes to make enemies, I\u2019ve identified certain things that I think are obnoxious and need to be named and shamed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I came to identify the zealotry I described by reflecting on the puzzling, bewildering behavior of some of my critics. Of course I am interested here\u2014I was the object of the criticism, and maybe what I\u2019m saying is unfair. I just have to leave readers to judge. But I was bewildered by the fact that my critics didn\u2019t seem to be able to read what was on the page and would claim I said things I never said, and in fact things I denied saying\u2014despite having title of <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">professor <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in front of their name and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">PhD<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> after. They would make straw men that purported to represent me and then blow them down, although they didn\u2019t represent me at all. They would go beyond what the evidence allows them to say, or they would ignore whole swaths of data. And one of them appears to have made it his life\u2019s work to discredit me. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, I thought, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My goodness, these people cannot help themselves. They are being driven. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was at that point that I first reached for the word demonic to describe the phenomena\u2014demonic in the sense that these people don\u2019t seem to be able to stop themselves being driven to go beyond what careful attention to the data or reason allows. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then I noticed that not a single one of the main critics I\u2019ve engaged has conceded anything. I\u2019m willing to admit I\u2019ve made a mistake. I answer my ten most hostile critics and make some minor concessions in the paperback edition of my book on colonialism. But the other side makes no concessions whatsoever. And I remembered that, as a Christian, I perceive myself as a creature and a sinner, so I might be mistaken. That\u2019s why I try to be careful. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve answered these people as best I can, because I do not think I\u2019m God. However, by contrast, my critics behave as if they think <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">they <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are God. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In light of this, I\u2019ve taken to saying that one of the great advantages of believing in God is that you\u2019re less likely to mistake yourself for one. That\u2019s really why I started talking in those terms. Criticism, of course, is absolutely fair game, but many of my critics don’t want a conversation because they have no sense we are equals trying to find out the truth together, who are assuming we might have something to learn. That\u2019s not how, in my experience, the other side behaves. So I reach for theological language: they behave like little gods, not sinful creatures. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So let me ask you this question then, because in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Behaving in Public<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, you wrote, \u201cAs a Christian would love the world, he will play the pastor before he plays prophet. For the only people a prophet has the right to prophesy against are those he has first cared to make his own.\u201d That\u2019s a striking line in juxtaposition with your critique of \u201cdemonic\u201d ideological tyrants. Are there limits to the types of denunciations we should have toward our foes in the culture war? And if not, what does it look like or what might it mean for Christians to make our foes in the culture war <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">our own<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>One of the great advantages of believing in God is that you\u2019re less likely to mistake yourself for one.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=One of the great advantages of believing in God is that you\u2019re less likely to mistake yourself for one.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=One of the great advantages of believing in God is that you\u2019re less likely to mistake yourself for one.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><b>NB:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> That is a very good question which is a species of the generally difficult question of how one should relate to and treat zealots. In my life, I have come across a variety of zealots. I misspent many hours of my youth trying to argue with Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses before discovering that, actually, there’s not a lot of point here. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And then I was very interested in other kinds of ideologues; for example, members of the Irish Republican Army or young radical British Muslims. I wanted to know why some people exited their ideology. The conclusions I\u2019ve drawn from reflecting on the question are simple. First, we never know what the effect of telling the truth will be. It\u2019s always worth telling it once, maybe twice. But there may come a time when you\u2019ve done that, and there\u2019s nothing more you can do. The penny may drop in their minds over time. It\u2019s always worth saying what you believe to be true and maybe repeating it, but not forever. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A second conclusion is, however, that ideologues again are not interested in a conversation; they\u2019re interested in either persuading you or making you submit. If someone approaches you in a provocative, insulting manner from the get-go, you know they don\u2019t want a conversation. If you engage with them, you\u2019re likely to be reduced to an undignified scrap in which you lose your dignity and your temper. So if someone approaches you in that fashion, refuse to engage on those terms. Some exchanges are simply not worth having. They\u2019re dangerous, and silence is the best response. And there is good dominical precedent for Christians to use silence in response to what other people say. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The third thing I\u2019d say is that even ideologues and zealots may speak the truth. And that\u2019s why I felt I ought to respond to the ten most hostile critics to my book on colonialism. I paid them the respect of taking what they said seriously and assessing how much sense it made. I conceded three or four minor points to my most obsessive and recalcitrant critic. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Finally, zealots are not the only ones we are speaking to. In a conference I held in Oxford in 2019, Bret Weinstein gave us the gnomic advice, \u201cAlways remember the room is not the room,\u201d which means, when you\u2019re faced with an aggressive zealot, you need to think about how you behave to the people who are watching. They are the more important audience. So for their sake it may be important to speak the truth as best you can without being drawn into an undignified scrap. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> You detail a number of intellectual vices that undermine liberal argumentation, including \u201cpulling rank\u201d and engaging in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ad hominem<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> attacks. One worry that someone might have is that your account of liberalism is too idealized, that the image of dispassionate debate and dialogue might fit a university but is too precious for a non-academic context. How should the boundaries of speech be enforced, if at all? <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NB: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If my account of a liberal culture is too ideal, we should consider the alternative: a culture where people don’t reason together, but shout at each other, use political leverage against each other, and extremists use violence. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Second, as I argue in the book, the typical liberal virtues of respect and tolerance are far too thin. They need a wider array of supporting virtues: humility, docility, temperance, courage, etc. And that such traits <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">virtues is not obvious to every worldview. As I mentioned earlier, Aristotle didn’t think much of humility, nor did Nietzsche. There are certain worldviews where these virtues make sense, including a Christian worldview. If we want to sustain a liberal culture, we might have to dig deeper both morally and metaphysically. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That said, political life is rambunctious and messy. Even in polite debate in the House of Lords, there are lots of articulate speeches, but less listening than pontificating. So even in that low-temperature political forum, liberal values are not always well represented. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I still think the ideals are worth holding up and there are political figures who rise up to them. For instance, I give you Barack Obama as an example of charity, by which I mean giving an opponent\u2019s argument its strongest construction before dismantling it. Such an approach is generous, but also more effective because you’ve dismantled your opponent\u2019s strongest position, rather than the weakest. From my reading, that was Obama\u2019s practice as an attorney: he would scrupulously represent his opposition\u2019s argument and only then begin to take it apart. It\u2019s effective rhetorically, because it shows uncommitted observers that you\u2019re being fair. And it\u2019s politically effective, because generosity impresses. So I don’t accept that the ideal is incapable of realization. As a Christian, and as someone with a little political experience, I don’t expect life to be much less than a mess. One has to try and work his way through. But one is called to do so as scrupulously as one can.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think a lot of readers of this book will have no idea that it picks up themes that you articulated in your <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/j.1467-9795.2008.00378.x\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">inaugural lecture as the Regius Professor at Oxford<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, where you argued universities need an Augustinian liberalism. You argue in that lecture that theological premises will sometimes reshape ethical concepts in important ways. As you put it, \u201cfrom time to time the theologian must \u2026 say something theological.\u201d I\u2019m curious when you think it might be time to say something theological about the culture wars. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>NB:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I do say something explicitly theological in this book: the worldview of monotheists, and especially Christian monotheists, generates and makes intelligible liberal virtues. If people were to adopt that worldview, it would help enormously to sustain a liberal culture. But lots of people who now warm to Christian virtues can’t quite bring themselves to endorse the theological assertions. I want to say to them, \u201cOkay, if you can\u2019t bring yourself to buy the full fat version, there may be ways in which you can approximate it for reasons you may not entirely understand yourself.\u201d <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This goes back to an experience I had when I was chaplain of Oriel College in Oxford in the 1990s. After one of our very atmospheric services in chapel, a female undergraduate came up to me and said, \u201cChaplain, I really enjoyed that. But I feel such a fraud because I don’t believe.\u201d People are drawn to Christianity at a variety of different levels and can assent to it at different points. We’re not always consistent. The Christian worldview is important to generate and support certain virtues. I am explicitly theological there. Not everyone is able to buy the full package for reasons that God alone knows, but they may still appreciate the \u2018liberal\u2019 virtues for various reasons, including the ugliness of the illiberal, warring alternative. I have also argued elsewhere that <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/spectator.com\/article\/wokery-is-a-christian-heresy\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cwokery\u201d or progressivism is a Christian heresy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and explained <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetablet.co.uk\/authors\/nigel-biggar\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that I am liberal <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">because <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I’m a Christian<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. So I have in fact made a point of saying a number of things theological on this matter.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MLA: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One conclusion a reader might draw from your trajectory of addressing these issues at the outset of your time in Oxford to arguing them when you have left the academy would be that the university cannot be saved from within. Can it? What counsel would you give to young, academically inclined conservatives as they seek to navigate this terrain?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class='sharequotebox'><blockquote class='sharequotestxt'>Play the long game. The task of reconstruction may take more than a generation.<\/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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts"e=Play the long game. The task of reconstruction may take more than a generation.\" 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=3&rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts&text=Play the long game. The task of reconstruction may take more than a generation.&original_referer=\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter-square\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<p><b>NB: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The kinds of things I say in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New Dark Age<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I began to say around 2005 in Dublin, when I preached a sermon in Trinity College Chapel about the university’s crucial role in the cultivation of virtue. Up until recently, my academic colleagues would have sucked their teeth or taken a step backwards if they were told that they should be in the business of cultivating intellectual virtue among their students, and would have expressed horror at the idea they should be responsible for assuming such a Victorian-Edwardian morally formative role. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now universities have decided that they are in the business of propagating progressive virtues like compassion and kindness. They apparently now recognize they are in the virtue-formation business. So we have the opportunity to expand the range of virtues universities should be in the business of cultivating. But these are early days in terms of that in the UK.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My sense is that the U.S. has a wider range of higher education institutions\u2014you have explicitly Christian institutions and a number of recent conservative foundations. And I think your original republican political tradition speaks the language of virtue in a way that we don’t hear in Britain. I remember reading an early state constitution and noticing how the language of rights was accompanied by the language of virtue. So I think the idea that colleges are responsible for moral formation is not so alien in the U.S. But in the UK now, it\u2019s very strange. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can universities be redeemed? In addition to being chairman of the Free Speech Union in the UK, I am also chairman of the Pharos Foundation. We are in the business of injecting scholarship of a high caliber that is not obsessed with race, gender, or decolonization into the bloodstream of Oxford University. We\u2019ve held a series of lectures the last five years in honor of Roger Scruton, which have been highly popular. We think the ground here is fertile for more conservative, more pro-Western, less \u201cprogressive\u201d thinking. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My advice to younger scholars would be to ask themselves whether they have the opportunity to infiltrate the system. They might have to bite their tongues until they get tenure, but if they can carve out space to breathe intellectually, then infiltrate, be the mustard seed, be the yeast. Do not abandon the system but find colleagues who are sympathetic with you. Many of them will be intimidated. But it is a practical certainty that there are more people around in universities who are both \u201cliberal\u201d (in my sense) by temperament and harbor heterodox conservative thoughts. If conservatives gather together, they can begin to change things.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It may be that you conclude that certain institutions are irredeemable and you need to create new ones. This has been happening in the States, as you know. Here, it hasn\u2019t happened recently. But when non-conformists were not allowed into Oxford and Cambridge in the nineteenth century, they founded their own colleges in northern England, which became universities in the twentieth century. Play the long game. The task of reconstruction may take more than a generation. But then, abolishing slavery in Britain took fifty years, so let\u2019s not be impatient.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><strong><em>Image licensed<a href=\"https:\/\/stock.adobe.com\/images\/the-view-of-radcliffe-camera-in-the-center-of-radcliffe-square-oxford-university-oxford-england\/300777542?prev_url=detail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> via Adobe Stock.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The typical liberal virtues of respect and tolerance are far too thin. 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