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Hartheim Castle

Euthanasia in the Castle: Inside Europe’s Museums of Nazi Medical Crimes

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Today we might instinctively look at Nazi criteria for death as utterly baseless, but at the time seasoned medical professionals regarded them as reasonable. To have a sense of history is to grasp the arbitrariness of such criteria. When it comes to killing patients, there is no way to get the criteria just right because the stamp of medical approval sends a social message that there is a category of persons who should not exist.
Parthenon

Social Contract Theory in the Ruins?

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Is government by consent irretrievably lost? I maintain that the principle of consent is not lost and that we can rebuild a different sort of social contract theory from amid the ruins.
Israel Palestine

What Is Settler Colonialism? A Q&A with Adam Kirsch

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The only way to actually create a better future is to start with the world we actually live in and move forward—which may require “despairing” of the past, which cannot be changed.
Constitution

Give Me That Old Time Originalism

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Originalism in Theology and Law is a welcome salvo in an ecumenical and interdisciplinary conversation that has been too long dominated by originalism’s critics.
Capital punishment

Wrongful Executions and the Pro-Life Movement’s Responsibility 

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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.
hospice

Consciousness and Sedation at the End of Life

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Consciousness is not simply a phenomenon that can be arbitrarily dispensed with or suppressed at whim: it is a critical element of the human experience, particularly in the last chapter of one’s earthly existence, during which one comes face to face with the mystery of suffering and the meaning of life.
Capitol building

The Patience of Conservatism

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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. 
ethics advice column

Ask Chris Tollefsen: An Ethics Advice Column

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For one thinking clearly about the issue, the incrementalist approach is not only permissible, but obligatory, a matter of justice to those unborn human beings who can, but otherwise will not, be saved.
married couple

The Mystery of Marriage

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A religious attitude, even if only a general one, is essential to marriage; it is therefore no surprise that marriage is declining in the West as religiosity declines.
cemetery

Reflections on Avelut

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Most Americans will not begin adopting avelut practices in any kind of wholesale manner. But it offers insights into the human condition that may nonetheless be helpful—about the timing of the grief cycle, the need to honor the departed free from distraction, and how communities might adopt robust mourning structures to support those who are suffering. 
child at doctor's office

Evidence over Ideology: Gender-Distressed Children Deserve Nothing Less

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When it comes to children’s health, ideology should never override evidence. Children who are distressed about their biological sex need evidence-based care that facilitates their journey to adulthood, keeping them mentally and physically intact.
Israel flag

What Conservatives, Catholics, and All Americans Can Learn from Israel 

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As the experience of many nations around the world shows, constitutions are easily dissolved, and constitutional order lost, when citizens allow their leaders to violate their charter to achieve partisan goals. When that happens, the delicate system of checks and balances usually gives way to an oppressive one-party rule. 
DVH

Pride and Concupiscence: An Excerpt from The Roots of Moral Evil by Dietrich von Hildebrand 

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If we are to understand how it is possible for someone to pursue the subjectively satisfying in such a way as to disrespect a good possessing a morally relevant value, we have to realize that in man live two mighty tendencies that are incompatible with value-response: pride and concupiscence.
Charles Maurras

The Anti-Transcendent Politics of Charles Maurras

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Many of the causes championed by the New Right are worthy ones. But a prudential calculation made in good faith, and which refuses to compromise on principle, is something quite different from the enthusiastic advocacy of positions that contradict principle entirely or the embrace of ideologies that are fundamentally anti-religious.
grandmother and granddaughter

To Die Well, We Must Live Well—And for Others

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Living for others is hard for everyone, in any stage of life. And in a culture that exalts the autonomous self, it is hard to remember that sacrifice is the only path to flourishing.
IVF

An IVF Primer 

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These essays are not provided out of callousness or a lack of empathy, but if we are to be responsible, we must be well-informed so that we can judge and choose in keeping with the truth of things.
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.
the Aeneid

A Spiritual Aeneid

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Readers will find in this book an insightful and witty commentary, suitable both for the serious student of the poem and for the layman reading it in translation. If it encourages anyone to read Virgil with fresh eyes or for the first time, it will have served its purpose.  
mother and baby

Loving Both Mother and Child: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Case for a Maternal, Pro-Life Feminism

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We must love mother and child alike: there is no other path to true “reproductive justice.” 
Church

Christian Institutions in a New World

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Smith's book is an excellent reminder that conservatives should never prioritize an idealized individual or nation. Rather, we must work to preserve those institutions that point us to better lives.
Dawson

Religion and Revolution: Christopher Dawson and the “Great Awokening”

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Like all secular revolutionary movements of the modern age, wokeism is a religion in denial. We will only put an end to the cycle of violent political revolution if we return to the Christian religion that gave birth to our civilization.
The Vatican

Across the Divide: M. Ciftci and Nathaniel Peters on Vatican II, Church–State Relations, and Political Participation 

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Christians should always make the best of any pragmatic agreements they can find with non-Christians on any issue. But the evangelical reasons why we support, for instance, constitutional government should be made clear, not veiled in embarrassment by translating them into the idiom of natural law or human dignity out of a misguided concern to avoid blurring the boundaries between political and religious affairs.
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.
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