Published Date: June 23, 2023 | Topics: Philosophy, Religion
This piece originally appeared in National Review‘s June issue When I was twelve years old, I watched my father rush into a burning building to rescue a paraplegic man in a wheelchair. In the summers, we lived in a little house beside a creek in the village of Mt. Morris, in the heart of the Appalachians. […]
Published Date: December 6, 2022 | Topics: Religion
One of the great stains on the history of the Catholic Church is the contempt—and sometimes worse—that some Catholics, including some leaders of the Church, have over the centuries expressed for Jews and Judaism. Catholics were never required as a matter of doctrine to hold anti-Jewish attitudes or support, much less participate in, the persecution […]
Published Date: November 27, 2022 | Topics: Civil Rights and Liberties, Politics and Current Affairs
America is blessed with two broad categories of universities: religiously affiliated and non-sectarian. Both make important contributions to the education of America’s young people. All public universities and many private universities — including Princeton University, where I teach — are non-sectarian. Their primary mission is not to promote a particular set of doctrines. It is […]
Published Date: October 17, 2022 | Topics: Civil Rights and Liberties, Politics and Current Affairs
As I’ve been predicting on social media for nearly two years, former Congresswoman and Democratic presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard has, to great fanfare, announced that she is leaving the Democratic Party. I expect her to win herself a second news cycle sometime after the mid-term election by announcing that she is joining the Republican Party. […]
Published Date: October 17, 2022 | Topics: Religion
Young men who are or will soon be fathers: The thing to remember is that your children, especially your sons, will care deeply about how you regard them and will be watching everything you do. First, love your wives, serve them with strength and humility, and be attentive, affectionate, and faithful to them. Your kids will […]
Published Date: October 9, 2022 | Topics: Politics and Current Affairs
At the twenty-five US News top-ranked research universities and the twenty-five US News top-ranked liberal arts colleges this past spring, many graduation speakers delivered remarks, and many honorary degrees were conferred. Not all the speakers and degree recipients had easily discoverable political or ideological profiles. But many did. Not a single one was a conservative. That’s right. Not one. […]
Published Date: September 11, 2022 | Topics: Politics and Current Affairs
Recently on his “Uncommon Knowledge” broadcast, Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford interviewed Matthew Continetti, author of a fine new book on American conservatism, and Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished public policy scholar and former president of the American Enterprise Institute. Toward the end of the conversation, Robinson asked his guests why America’s Big […]
Published Date: August 31, 2022 | Topics: Civil Rights and Liberties, Constitutional Issues
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held that there is no right to abortion implicitly protected by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment or any other provision of the Constitution, thereby overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said the […]
When a new religion or ideology sweeps through a culture, and especially when that religion or ideology becomes fashionable among elites as the ideology of expressive individualism has become in the United States, people react in various ways. Those who have already abandoned the old religion or religions, or whose allegiance to them is merely […]
Published Date: June 28, 2022 | Topics: Natural Law, Philosophy
A handful of books made a deep impression on me when I was a student at Harvard Law School in the late 1970s and early 1980s. One was The Concept of Law, by the great Oxford legal philosopher H. L. A. Hart. I first encountered it in a jurisprudence course taught by Charles Fried, then again […]