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 ArticleLiving 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 ArticleRémi 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 ArticleOutrage 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 ArticleWe 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 ArticleWhat 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 ArticleSweeney 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 ArticleThe 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 ArticleThe 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 ArticleConservative 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 ArticleConservative 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 ArticleReviving 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 ArticleLiberalism 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 ArticleBaby 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 ArticleManagerial 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 ArticleThe 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 ArticleThe 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 ArticleLiberalism 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 ArticleOK, 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 ArticleThe 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 ArticleLiberal 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 ArticleSending 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 ArticleReflections 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 ArticleJohn 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...
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