Quantcast
Channel: Nathanael Blake, Author at Public Discourse
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 30 View Live

Self-Creation or God's Creation? Mistaken Identities and...

Our culture has an odd identity crisis. It is not that we do not know who we are, but that we are apparently incapable of shutting up about it. From identity politics to the elevation of gender...

View Article



Living With Morals: A Review of The Fall of Gondolin

It began with an ending. J.R.R. Tolkien’s first tale of Middle-earth was of ruin, written “in hospital and on leave after surviving the Battle of the Somme.” His “first real story of this imaginary...

View Article

Rémi Brague’s Bleak but Brilliant Analysis of the Modern Project

Reading a bad book holds few pleasures, but it does make the next good book more enjoyable. Having recently slogged through Steven Pinker’s wretched pop-academic book, Enlightenment Now, it was a...

View Article

Outrage Mobs Might Be More Forgiving If They Believed in Hell

Why did Plato need Hell? In the opening pages of the Republic, Cephalus relates that old age lends new terror to the “stories we’re told about Hades, about how people who’ve been unjust here must pay...

View Article

We Were Parents

“Our baby is dead or dying.” My wife knew this without my explaining the doctor’s words. She knew before the doctor started talking, but hoped that it was not happening—that the blood work was mistaken...

View Article


What We Don’t Know: Does Gender Transition Improve the Lives of People with...

Is the science about transgenderism settled? Transgender activists and their allies claim that it is. For example, last year the New York Times published an op-ed by Nathaniel Frank, director of the...

View Article

Sweeney Trump and the Hollow Men

Is Donald Trump a hollow man? Ross Douthat thinks so. He recently opined that “To analyze Trump is to discover only bottomless appetite and need, and to carve at him is like carving at an online troll:...

View Article

The Age of Miracles and Misery Machines

You can’t win it all in the genetic lottery—or, at least, I didn’t. I won some, such as being six feet tall with a full head of hair, and I lost some, such as having cataracts develop in my early...

View Article


The Long Autumn of Our Content

What if winter isn’t coming? Ross Douthat’s new book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, offers the dour proposition that we not only live amidst decadence, but that we...

View Article


Conservative Liberalism, Liberal Despotism: Part 1

American conservatives seem stuck with liberalism. We are citizens of the original liberal democracy, so it seems we must be liberal if we wish to preserve our patrimony. But what sort of liberalism...

View Article

Conservative Liberalism, Liberal Despotism: Part 2

Is American conservatism the guardian of liberal ideology? Some factions in the Right’s current debates assert that the American Founding was based on classical liberal ideology, which, they argue, it...

View Article

Reviving the Freedom of Association

The coronavirus pandemic has illuminated a truth taught by preachers and philosophers since ancient times: man is a social being, and it is not good for him to be alone. Many find it difficult to bear...

View Article

Liberalism as Christian Personalism?

Is there life after liberalism? The post–Cold War ascendancy of liberal democratic capitalism has given way to exhaustion and decadence. The Left has become increasingly illiberal in pursuit of its...

View Article


Baby Is a Punk Rocker: On the Givenness of Life

When my daughter was a newborn, I developed a simple variant on the popular “5 S’s” sleep method: I would swaddle and gently rock her, preferably while blasting some punk rock. I tested a few different...

View Article

Managerial Oligarchy: Why Conservatives Should Oppose Big Business

Welcome to managerial oligarchy, where those who steward the gold make the rules. The corporate backlash to Georgia’s anodyne voting reforms has clarified the nature of the emerging American regime....

View Article


The Contradictions of Absolute Academic Freedom

Universities should not hire professors who support infanticide, racism, or bestiality. This commonsense view was challenged during a recent panel discussion in which Princeton professor Robert George...

View Article

The Impossibility of Absolute Academic Freedom: A Response to Robert T. Miller

Like unicorns, absolute academic freedom has never existed, does not exist, and never will exist. Approximations of it develop only under rare historical circumstances, and in such cases a peek behind...

View Article


Liberalism Has Become a Dirty Joke

Liberalism is becoming a dirty joke, along the lines of the infamous Aristocrats stand-up routine. The setup for the latter is that a talent agent is auditioning an act—the details vary depending on...

View Article

OK, Groomer: Why Some in the LGBT Movement Are Focusing on Kids

Normal people believe that sexualizing children is predatory. But, in light of the recent passage of a Florida bill that would restrict instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in...

View Article

The Problems of Putting off Children

Changing a diaper is not that difficult. Doing it in the dark at 3:30 a.m. after a few weeks of rarely sleeping for more than ninety minutes at a stretch, while being screamed at, is the hard part. The...

View Article

Liberal Individualism Is Undermining Itself

Our liberal political order is premised on individual autonomy—the belief that people may justly be bound only by chosen duties and obligations. There is something gritty, American, and admirable about...

View Article


Sending the Wounded to the Front

The battle against transgender ideology will be won by the wounded. Chloe Cole’s recent discussion at the Heritage Foundation shows that the victims of the transgender movement are the ones who will...

View Article


Reflections of a Stay-at-Home Dad

“Stop fighting over baby Jesus!” I uttered this imperative not to break up students wrangling over a theological point that should have been settled by the Council of Nicaea, but because my children...

View Article

John the Baptist Was a Witness for Life and a Martyr for Marriage

It is June, and Pride has flooded the world. Pride is on display in the streets, in stores, in schools, and even at the White House. All of the great and the good (or at least the wealthy, famous, and...

View Article
Browsing latest articles
Browse All 30 View Live




Latest Images