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Politics

Reclaiming Free Speech: Can America’s New Leadership Turn the Tide?

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The Trump administration, though still in its early days, has taken decisive steps to cement its free-speech stance. Meanwhile, Europe doubles down on censorship. But one side must prevail, and there is reason to hope that if America continues to throw its might behind free speech, the next four years will see significant returns.

A Catholic Defense of Enforcing Immigration Laws

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While progressive Catholics conclude that Vice President Vance and other Catholic defenders of administration policy are flatly at odds with Church teaching on immigration, I will argue that that is not the case. Indeed, it is clear that Vance is not only well within those boundaries, but is in fact on much stronger ground than those who advocate a virtually “open borders” position in the name of Catholicism.

Natural Law and Liberalism

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The natural law account of politics acknowledges (in line with the Aristotelian tradition) that the purpose of political community is the all-around flourishing of its members, but it also acknowledges (in line with the liberal tradition) that the role of government in achieving this purpose is limited to securing the conditions that facilitate flourishing.

How Our Politics Failed during the COVID Pandemic: An Interview with Stephen Macedo

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There was a fundamental failure of toleration for alternative points of view. I think some of it might be explained by the fact that it was a pandemic. For public health guidance to be effective, people have to comply. To that I would say fair enough, but it’s also equally important—or more important—to have confidence that the policies are sound. People complying en masse with unsound policies won’t do us a whole lot of good. That’s what open debate is supposed to address.

Forgetfulness, Forgiveness, and Politics: The Case of Congress

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Congress has declined into a destructive cycle of revenge. To preserve the institution and strengthen our politics, politicians must take the risk to forgive.

Medical Conservatism Is the Antidote to MAHA

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When the next opportunity arrives, it should be used as a chance to demonstrate that Kennedy promises the same outcomes as the existing regime, just with different medicine. And if we want to finally cure ourselves of our failing model of health and wellness, we should start with a dose of medical conservatism.

The Civics Playbook

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A lot of people will no doubt want to know about the political direction of the new civics centers, and there is no hiding that they are inspired by conservative intellectual sensibilities. But to think that there is any sort of partisan agenda set from above misses the point of these schools entirely.

Joe Biden’s Final Attack on the Courts

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In the end, Biden's decision to veto the JUDGES Act can only be explained as a petty act of revenge against his predecessor and successor, President-elect Donald Trump. Republicans would do well to remember his partisan gracelessness next Congress when Democrats invariably make high-minded, self-interested appeals in the judicial wars.

The Conservative Counterculture

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From a scholarly perspective, the Bud Light boycott represents one of the first battles in the adaptation of political conservatives to their continued cultural disadvantage. Conservatives still operate at a disadvantage in academia and entertainment, but they have created an alternative media system that allows them to have a place at the table and an impact on our culture.
Constitution

The Ignoble Lie of Revolutionary Progressivism

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The transformation of the original Constitution into the living Constitution is revolutionary, not evolutionary, a bloodless coup deliberately launched by progressive intellectuals bent on undermining the founders’ Constitution.
J. D. Vance

The Political Potential of Postliberalism

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Even if Catholic postliberalism is no longer the intellectual avant-garde, populism is poised to shape the next few years of American politics.
Washington Monument

Gratitude in an Angry Time

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Those of us who think the stakes in our cultural conflicts are high, whichever side of those conflicts we are on, frequently find ourselves furious. But what are we angry about? Our responses to that question have to do not just with the latest news, but with deeper intuitions about the nature of the human person and its relation to the moral life of our society.
Trump

What Does Another Trump Presidency Mean for the Pro-Life Movement?

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Trump's reelection provides reason for pro-lifers to be cautiously relieved, though still apprehensive.
Europe

Pierre Manent’s Multifaceted Defense of the European Nation-State

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Pierre Manent has been a penetrating critic of the European Union, a measured but firm defender of the nation-state, and a Catholic thinker who has made signal contributions to the understanding of the Church’s role in European history, and to the understanding of many of its eminent thinkers. 
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.
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. 
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.
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.
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. 
pro-life movement

Make the Pro-Life Movement Great Again 

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There are fewer than one hundred days remaining in the 2024 election season. We have precious little time to refocus and recommit, and to learn from the losing campaigns to help inform our efforts going forward.
voting booth

The Bookshelf: They’re Our Parties and I’ll Cry If I Want To

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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.
Venezuelan flag

What’s Next for Venezuela? A Q&A with Angel Alvarado

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At this moment, what we can do is the right thing. And sometimes the right thing is very risky—going out into the streets and demonstrating your opinions on the situation. It's risky, but I think it’s our right, and I think it’s what is right.
Republican Party

Social Conservatives, Populism, and Confused Republicans

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Social conservatives serve a noble cause, and any populism ignoring their concerns is a populism not worth supporting.
Supreme Court in Finland

Tried for a Tweet

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What I’ve learned in the five years the Finnish state prosecuted me for my faith
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