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Leslie Rubin’s portrait of Aristotelian America and American Aristotelianism is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of our situation.
Leslie Rubin’s brilliant study argues that the fault, dear America, lies not in our stars but in ourselves—our repudiation in the past century of the moderate liberal philosophy of Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike, which was steeped in Aristotelian wisdom about favoring the decent republican virtues of a middle class.
The new antiliberals are not wrong to worry about the dire state of American politics and culture. But they persistently fail to adequately ask, much less clearly answer, three pressing questions that must be part of any adequate treatment of the problem, and they virtually ignore the thoughtful conservative alternatives to antiliberalism that do address these questions.
The beautiful, happy 2018 Gerber Baby, Lucas, is lucky to be alive. Most children diagnosed with Down syndrome in utero are now killed before birth.
Though our political institutions are designed to be secular and non-sectarian, our laws rest on Christian ideas about what we owe each other as human beings made in the image and likeness of God.
The current debate about gay Christianity traces back to a centuries-old dispute between Protestants and Catholics about the doctrine of man and the doctrine of sin. Roman Catholics do not regard involuntary desire for sin (concupiscence) to be sinful. Reformed Protestants do.
Loving America well means taking her seriously—working to preserve what is lovely about her and to fix what is not.
We can’t undo the past, but we can avoid repeating its mistakes. Here’s how.
As the late Justice Scalia was fond of pointing out, the views of individual lawmakers in the midst of debate are not themselves the law we must interpret. Neither are the votes taken in a deliberative body rightly viewed as votes on anyone’s interpretation of the text under discussion. The text that they passed, not what they said about what they passed, is the law.
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.
The pardon power is the most significant and strongest power of the president, and the Constitution places almost no limits on it. In using it, the president can unilaterally nullify the legitimate authority of the legislative and judicial branches.
The Trump administration has launched several encouraging initiatives to strengthen conscience protection for healthcare workers. But the bills that would enshrine these protections into law are moving at a snail’s pace through the House and Senate.
If there is one truth that the entire philosophic tradition—including America’s Founders—may be said to embrace, in spite of all its disagreements, it is this: reason teaches that it is unreasonable to expect people to act by reason alone.
The city of Philadelphia is targeting Catholic Social Services for its policy, based on religious beliefs about marriage, of not placing foster children with same-sex couples.
If we want a different politics, ultimately we must offer a different moral imagination for ourselves, our children, and theirs.
Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is a provocative attempt to explain what’s wrong with our culture, how this came to be, and what might be done about it. Although his historical account of liberalism is unpersuasive, he offers a prescient analysis of the current moment and insightful prescriptions for constructive action.
Social conservatives are right to oppose proposed legislation that would ban therapy to help those experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction or gender identity confusion. But they’re wrong to say that the bill would ban books.
It was Christianity, not modernity, that separated church and state. It was modernity, not Christianity, that sought to bind them back together. And, at day’s end, the American order has more in keeping with the Christian apostasy than with either antiquity’s sacral political orders or modernity’s rejection of the claim that there exists any domain outside the jurisdiction of the modern state.
Because liberal Western democracies are ostensibly rooted in the theory of popular sovereignty, elite disdain for the people creates another legitimation crisis—one that many fail to recognize. It is not simply that the people have lost confidence in the elites and their governance, or that the elites struggle to speak for (and even to) the people. Disdain for the people also unmoors elite authority.
Women are deeply effective in the transmission of mores, as are the churches, schools, and civic organizations that they serve and lead. If these institutions were touched by white supremacy even into the 1970s, how can those educated by such institutions escape the influence of these opinions in their own interpretations of contemporary racial politics?
Same-sex parenting advocates are calling on states’ rights to define the legal relationship between parent and child. What they seek is the power to write the record of a child’s origins and to determine a fundamental aspect of a child’s identity.
The foundation is being laid for widespread legalization of physician-assisted suicide.
Originalism is the commonsense, traditional American approach to constitutional interpretation, not a contemporary conservative invention.
Should we determine whether a person is fit to be a judge based on his or her religious beliefs or opinions on contemporary policy debates? Or should the Senate approve judges based on their reputation for fairness, their ability to follow and apply law, and their record of judicial wisdom?