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Book cover of the Betrothed

A Masterpiece Novel That Should Be an Instant Classic

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In Alessandro Manzoni’s recently translated novel, The Betrothed, the world is regularly pitted against the sanctity of a few. The novel often asks the reader, an implicit echo, how do you live as a faithful Christian when so much evil persists in the world? But more than anything, it shows us the reality of forgiveness and the possibility of fulfilling Jesus’s most challenging commandment: love your enemies.

Filling in the Blank Left in the Masterpiece Ruling: Why Gorsuch and Thomas Are Right

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The majority’s refusal to address the free speech issue in Masterpiece explains the intractability of debates over the scope of its free exercise ruling because, surprisingly, the two issues are linked. Two concurrences implicitly address the free speech issue. There the conservatives’ case is stronger, and supported explicitly by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor in dissent. In light of it, the Court’s Masterpiece ruling should provide robust protection for other creative professionals.

Masterpiece, Marriage, and Bigotry: The Court’s Ruling Is More Robust than Many Acknowledge

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State officials and judges cannot comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece simply by articulating facially neutral reasons for decisions that punish people for acting on the understanding that marriage is a man-woman union.

Masterpiece Cakeshop

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Should business owners be allowed to discriminate against their customers in light of their religious or moral convictions? With the Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in mind, these authors staunchly defend our constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

The Fourteenth Amendment and Masterpiece Cakeshop: Equal Citizenship, our Inclusive Republic, and Anglo-American Common Law

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The government cannot impose creedal and exclusionary limits on occupational freedom by compelling particular citizens to provide goods and services contrary to their beliefs, unless those citizens have such a monopoly market power as to exclude other citizens from the market.

Porn Is the Missing Piece in the Louis C.K. Story

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Pornography rewires its viewers’ brains, distorting the way they interpret the behavior of those around them and making them believe that unacceptable behavior will be welcomed.

What Masterpiece Cakeshop is Really About

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The vendor-marriage cases are part of the centuries-old pattern in which governments have attempted to compel dissenters to publicly affirm and acquiesce in the dominant orthodoxy. The first in a two-part series.

Cakes and Consciences: The Case of Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop

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The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case of Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, who declined to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding reception. There is no need to coerce artists to employ their abilities in ways contrary to their religious beliefs.
Ukraine war

Just War and Just Peace: A Response to Carson Holloway

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Love your neighbor as yourself—contra Holloway, the “Golden Rule” ethic makes for morally serious, honorable, and practical foreign policy considerations. What it needs, however, is an actor or agent—a willing agent—who has the moral backbone to respond. As with individuals, so it is with nations: to whom much has been given, much will be required.
bookshelf

The Bookshelf: Taking an Incomplete

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Readers, respect not the friends, critics, or even the judgments of posterity that insist on a book’s greatness. Enjoy what you read, and if you’re not enjoying yourself, stop, close the book, and go read something else.
anxious kid

Taking The Anxious Generation Further

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Haidt’s work points us toward reclaiming childhood. Let’s go further and reclaim our humanity.
community

From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, August 2024

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There are numerous ways that we increasingly strive to defy the natural limits our embodiedness imposes on us, and our pulling away from community and connectedness is just one example. In this kind of world, it’s easy to forget that our physical bodies, and all the limits and inconveniences they impose on us (or others!), matter a great deal. So it’s no mistake that our August essays seemed to touch on that theme. 
Soviet flag

Does America Need a Sharansky?

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Unfortunately, Morson looks only at a handful of symptoms that are vaguely comparable to the pathologies of late Soviet society and concludes that the same disease is at work. He does not address the deep causes of Soviet and Russian dysfunction, all of which are absent in the United States—authoritarianism, a command economy, censorship, oppression, terror, the Gulag. 
Catholic Church

Beyond the Crises in the Church: Pope Benedict XVI’s Pontificate and the Reason for Hope

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Regoli’s book reminds us that the Holy Spirit is constantly at work—that the Church has overcome numerous crises, including in the recent past.
married couple

Why Sex Matters

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Sex, while personal, isn’t private. Another person is involved, so it’s of interest to society and the state, as are children and family. The whole human dynamic, all of it, wouldn’t exist without people—to state the obvious—and the decline of marriage and fertility affects the future of everything and everyone.
Red Square in Moscow

Waiting for Sharansky

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As we unwittingly imitate the worst of Soviet culture, we need deliberately to imitate the best as well.
Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins Feminism

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As I revisited the familiar lyrics from my childhood, I noticed new themes and deeper meanings. To my surprise, I soon reached the unlikely conclusion that this classic family film has much to teach us about women, work, and feminism.
mother and baby

Giving until It Hurts: Helping Mothers Love

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The way to foster a loving bond between mother and child is to nurture a wider culture of support and love. It is not fair to children to deprive them of their mother’s womb for their life before birth. But it is also not fair to mothers to deprive them of the support they need to make pregnancy and motherhood bearable. 
ideology

What Is Ideology? A Conversation with Mark Shiffman and James Matthew Wilson

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Ideology replaces respect for the dignity of the human person with celebration of a new humanity required for its perfected social and political order.
modern apartments

From the Editor’s Desk: Public Discourse’s Monthly Roundup, May 2024

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We work hard at every level of the editorial process to ensure that our essays are well-crafted, that our language is precise and that our arguments are sound. But most of all, we want to encourage and teach our readers to appreciate a well-formed argument, even if they ultimately come to a different conclusion than we do.
antebellum South

The Complicated Legacy of the Folkways of the American South

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David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed appropriately decries the antebellum American South’s practice of slavery, while acknowledging the South’s production of Americans who have also served the cause of freedom and truth.
sacred scripture

Scripture as Poetic Sacrament

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A review of The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards (translated by Stephen E. Lewis, Jr.)
beautiful homemaking

Valuing the Craft of Beautiful Homemaking

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Understanding homemaking as a craft that produces beautiful (if intangible) results should hopefully encourage young men and women who are thinking about caring for a home and/or children. For the young mother or father overwhelmed by all there is to do and feeling incompetent in the face of the multiple—often conflicting—demands of house and children, it may help to know that homemaking is a skill to be developed over time.
bad therapy

Familial Support Is the Antidote to Bad Therapy

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In her popular new book, Abigail Shrier challenges parents to help kids through the hard parts of life rather than relying on the therapy industry.
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