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While serious people can debate the underlying ethics of whether the death penalty is just, our country has proven that it is unable to carry out executions in a way that protects justice.
This election will come and go, and the results will be, as usual, a mixed bag. There are better and worse alternatives, of course, and I have my own judgments and evaluations about such things, as does everyone else. Rather, I’m thinking about a mood too prevalent among conservatives in our time, one where gratitude, patience, caution, and fidelity have given way to anger, panic, urgency, and bile. Such are not conservative, nor are they good for us or our opponents, and they are likely to make things far, far worse. 
Rana’s history prompts us to reflect on how we ought to conceive of American identity and defend the Constitution’s anti-majoritarian checks and balances in the twenty-first century.
And so here we are, with hyper-partisanship and extremely weak parties, largely because earlier generations of “reformers” wanted to make them more “responsible” (read “ideological”) and more “democratic” (read “responsive to a narrow base”). It’s past time to have a conversation about reforming the reforms. More creative thinking about how to make parties again represent the great middle of the country would be most welcome.
One brave soul might be willing to sacrifice a career or even a life for the greater good, as has been repeatedly the case for many individuals in China and in other authoritarian nations. But for the activist’s actions to then result in the suffering or even death of loved ones is too high a price.
Our postmodern academy is never going to bring back traditional prosody on its own, so we should probably be thinking hard about how to use the Internet to bring the traditional tools of English poetry back to the people.
The president is not a king above the law. With the failure of the courts and political institutions to preserve and enforce these principles, it falls to us, who are the first and last check on government, to do so with all the lawful powers at our disposal as citizens.  
Popular culture tells us it is often more efficient to outsource routine household tasks than do them yourself. This leaves an important question unanswered, however: efficient at what? 
The modern administrative state rests on a dismissal of separation of powers principles. But for the Left to even use the language of separation of powers suggests some victory for conservatism.
Conservatives, who sometimes can be seen as wanting to turn the clock much farther back than the last decade, will need to identify ways of applying core principles in ways that avoid falling into sheer revanchism. Old-fashioned liberals who wish to recover a circa 2013 version of the Democratic Party will have to lay out what, exactly, they would change to prevent the same cultural trends from playing out all over again.
Education should rehumanize us. In higher education, with the guidance of professors and mentors and elders, we should move through Homer, Newton, Wordsworth, Du Bois, O’Connor, and be transformed by our love for the good, true, and beautiful, into the person we are meant to be.
The attraction of subjecting oneself to ideological thought, then, is a new form of something very old: the desire to escape the limitations and uncertainties of the human condition of knowledge and action by availing ourselves of a greater-than-human power.
As Americans prepare to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation’s birth, in 2026, some argue there’s more to criticize than celebrate. Guelzo's latest book provides ample evidence of what Lincoln found worth celebrating about the American experiment, and what Guelzo finds worth celebrating about Lincoln.
If our society is to answer the question “What is a woman?” we will have to think more about how women can integrate their professions with their femininity, without stifling it, and about the value of the virtues that women on average exemplify better than men. Considering Edith Stein’s thoughts on these questions is an excellent way to start.
It seems the utopian impulse and the dystopian nightmare are never very distant from one another. If we are to love Big Brother, as Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s novel, all our other loves must be intruded upon, damaged, even sacrificed entirely. The case for freedom begins with the case for love.
Self-interest in a democracy is not necessarily an evil. It only becomes an evil when democratic government grows so intrusive in ordinary life that self-interest can only be interpreted as a kind of dissent from a general—but now all-pervasive—good.
AntiFems face a dilemma. On one hand, they want to affirm, protect, and promote the distinctiveness of women. On the other hand, they oppose what at present seems like the only viable strategy for achieving that end, the recovery and extension of an authentic feminism. 
The plight of the Palestinians is indeed a tragic one. Peace with their stronger neighbor will not come easily to them. Only a cessation of terrorism, of attacks on civilians, and of demonization of the Jewish people will enable them to make any substantial progress. Sad to say, the first steps may have to be taken by the Western elites who have learned to make anti-Semitism fashionable again, and have a great deal of unlearning to do. 
That is the trap of busyness: believing that the busyness itself is what matters, instead of placing all our work and all our rest at the feet of our maker. That is the trap that the addiction to busyness in our culture lays for us. That is the trap that we ought to resist.
If local politicians expect to be reelected, they have to focus on solving problems that are immediately relevant to their communities and the real people who live in them.
Women need a grounded feminism that calls for a higher standard for both men and women. Before that happens, we need to be real about who women are, and part of that is acknowledging how aspects of the sexual revolution continue to harm women and relationships between the sexes. 
The country is divided. Many people support Donald Trump, and many revile him. Whatever is decided on his eligibility, or his criminal culpability in federal and state prosecutions, large numbers of people are going to be very unhappy.
Neuhaus’s hope is the greatest example he gives us today, especially those who feel their status as exiles more keenly than they expected. Fifteen years after his death, Christians have yet to find a more coherent proposal for how to think about political action in their pluralistic society.
This is not an easy time to be a bishop, especially as the DDF fosters confusion, but every bishop is called to lead the faithful into a deeper relationship with Christ through the Church. This requires heroic charity that embraces the sinner while being truthful to the Gospel. Jesus never blessed sin, and neither should the Church. His love for each of us is a love that calls us out of sin, which requires a recognition that some things are incompatible with the blessing of the Church.