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Search Results for: george – Page 2

Robert E Lee

Propriety without Principle: The Cautionary Tale of Robert E. Lee

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Robert E. Lee perhaps tried to be a gentleman, but his moral principles were weak. Therefore, when the flood of war came, he compromised with evil, then piled sin upon sin, as the rebellion’s corrupting logic swept away more and more of his moral foundations.
from the editor's desk

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

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If ennobling discourse is now countercultural, so too is our journal. Like the Witherspoon Institute, PD is an institution that bears witness to a virtuous (and virtuously “slower”) mode of public engagement: engagement that reflects an open-hearted, honest yearning for the common good.
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.
reading poetry

The Bookshelf: Waxing Poetic with A. M. Juster

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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.
SCOTUS

The Court Curtails the Administrative State

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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.
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.
bookshelf

The Bookshelf: Old Voices and New Alliances

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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.
romanticism

Romanticism Light and Dark: A Response to Margarita Mooney Clayton

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Whatever our centuries of godless materialism and scientism have alleged, the cosmos still is enchanted, inasmuch as it was and is being created, even now, by a loving and surpassingly mysterious God. To tell the truth is to admit that this cosmos bears his fingerprints, opening out into blinding wonder and moments of ineffable transcendence.
crib

The Cultural Roots of Our Demographic Ennui

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To get us out of the self-consuming ouroboros of frantically chasing experiences rather than investing in home and relationships will require a greater attention to virtues of thrift, local commitment, and a lower bar for what “living comfortably” looks like. Choosing to do hard things—to start a family, have kids, invest in local institutions, and put others before ourselves—requires a formation in values that lie outside the market. 
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.
family

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

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Strap in, everyone, for we need to acknowledge that what is called for now is a generational effort, likely to be multi-generational, to recover reality. And it all requires the family. As the family goes, so goes our society. The flashpoint at the university, in the end, is far downstream from what is happening in the family.
Catholic Church

Influential Women of the Church: An Interview with Bronwen McShea

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I’m hopeful, therefore, that not just ordinary readers, but also readers at the higher levels of ecclesial leadership, will learn some new things about women and Church history from my book. I also hope that some might reconsider and refine what they say in connection to the past and present role of women in Christian ecclesial and social life.
capitalism

The Right and the Future of Capitalism: Part 1

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Conservative economics, unlike the fundamentalism that supplanted it, embraces reason. As conservatives, we begin with a confident assertion of what the market is for and then consider the public policies necessary for shaping markets toward that end.
reading novels

The Bookshelf: Eros and Dystopia

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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.
pope

In the Courts of Three Popes: An Insider’s Insight

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Faithfully living what we claim to believe as Catholic Christians shapes the future. And the fact is, we can no longer afford a sclerotic Church, a comfortable Church, a get-along Church. We need to be a confessing Church, not just in our diocesan structures, but in the pews and family homes of every parish.
family

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

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The truth lurking inside the great morass of opinions, questions, and fears about the human condition is that a confluence of factors leads to greater personal, familial, and communal flourishing.
torn American flag

Sociology in the Age of Trump: The Clash of Deep Stories on the Left and Right

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If the stories can change, it stands to reason that they can improve—or deteriorate. Responsible cultural elites of the Left and Right alike would do well to consider not only what claims they make explicitly, but what kinds of stories underlie those claims, and whether these are the right stories to tell.
college students

A Third Voice: Protecting a Regime of Robust Speech on the Campus without Falling into Relativism

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We must be clear that nothing in the search for the truth entails that we recede in any way from the surety that we have with us, now as ever, the standards for judging evil ends to be truly evil.   
redbud tree

Ordinary Time 

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To admire the world and other people, and especially to appreciate the ordinary things that make up our ordinary existence: this is worthwhile activity.
oath

Disintegrating Conscience in a Fragmented Age 

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Although one might find oneself disagreeing with Smith, as I have on occasion, one will be better for it. And I can say that with a clear conscience.  
Israel-Hamas War

The West Has Forgotten Why Collateral Damage Is Morally Justified

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Ultimately, the defeat of these terrorist groups is the primary ethical imperative. This will benefit not only Israel but also the Gazan civilians who suffer longer under their terrorist leaders and the continuous warfare that they breed. There is a moral cost to not acting decisively, and a strategic cost to forgetting the moral justification for killing in war.
from the editor's desk

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

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Reflections on right reason plus a roundup of this month's essays
free speech at universities

In Defense of Free Speech and the Mission of the University 

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If we were to adopt Yoram’s call for censorship in areas where I am calling for freedom of speech, I invite him—and you, gentle reader—to consider the following question: Would the result be anything other than the further entrenchment of current campus orthodoxies, and the further weakening of protection for dissent and dissenters?
IVF

Location, Location, Location

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Location is simply one more of those many factors that make no difference where the most foundational moral principles are concerned. The human embryo is a human being, whether in utero, undergoing cell division in vitro, or temporarily (or permanently) in frozen stasis in a “nursery,” as the Alabama Supreme Court tellingly, but somewhat ironically, calls it.
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