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- Feed Preview Culture Archives - Public Discourse
The Kids Are Not All Right: A Review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation
“Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.” This i...
The Conspiracists
This moment, among other things, may call for something as banal as looking around, embracing and underscoring the figures and images that capture what is enduringly good about normal American li...
Of Mice and Alpha Men
I won’t resort to the “be yourself!” platitude or argue that anyone should unleash the waterworks on a first date. However, I will suggest that the relationships (particularly romantic ones...
Unjust Wars and Unwise Popes
As we enter the third year of the war, Western nations—with the U.S. in the lead—seem unwilling to get to the heart of the matter. Yes, Ukraine has miraculously survived, but this cannot be f...
Ordinary Time
To admire the world and other people, and especially to appreciate the ordinary things that make up our ordinary existence: this is worthwhile activity.
The Conservative Case for Remote Work
If conservative organizations want to promote an economy that centers around the family, one that rebuilds the small town and restores a healthy culture, they need to do more than promote the rig...
Religious Freedom Deserves a Right of Its Own
Religion is a basic good for all human beings everywhere, therefore religious freedom is a universal human right. It is neither unfair nor parochial, but a requirement of justice.
Q&A: Be Not Conformed—Girard and the Problem of Desire in a Postsecular Age
It’s useful to heed the words of Gabriel Marcel when it comes to desire. To paraphrase his “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived,” perhaps we could instead say: “...
Why Do We Valorize Busyness?
That is the trap of busyness: believing that the busyness itself is what matters, instead of placing all our work and all our rest at the feet of our maker. That is the trap that the addiction to...
Getting Authority Right: The Common Good and “Popular Sovereignty”
Alicea repeats often and correctly the age-old insight that responsibility to care for the common good belongs to each member of the political community. But an equal sharing of authority does no...
When Does an Intellectual Failing become a Moral One? Insights from Bonhoeffer
According to Bonhoeffer, it is easier to reason and dialogue with a malicious person than with a foolish one.
Timeless Truths: Encouraging Civil Discourse
Actively cultivating civility in our relationships with those with whom we disagree is itself a crucial way of anticipating the kind of people we want to be when the end time appears.
Music on Main Street: Building Community through Music
Amid political polarization and concerns about declining social capital, local classical music associations are a bright spot for building humane and civil communities.
It’s “Time to Think” about the Irreversible Damage of Shoddy Sciences: A Review of Hannah Barnes
Barnes repeatedly emphasizes the many parents or clinic employees who had tried to sound the alarm but whose warnings were ignored by clinic authorities. But Barnes is loath to draw any firm conc...
Taylor Swift’s Feminisms
Women need a grounded feminism that calls for a higher standard for both men and women. Before that happens, we need to be real about who women are, and part of that is acknowledging how aspects ...
China’s Dissident Historians
We have become accustomed to the darkness of today’s China. But Johnson shows us flickering sparks of light, hidden on hard drives and thumbnails, that tomorrow may become blazing fires.
Seeking Moral Vision in a Digital Age
It’s possible to be an awe-filled seeker of truth and use social media with prudence; however, social media are mediated by a tech industry that aims to capture our attention and keep us scroll...
Social Wounds, DEI Advocacy, and the Good of Lamentation
There are reasons for hope available to us all, believers or not, but the possibility of lamentation as a form of prayer provides an especially potent way of ensuring that lament is enlivened by ...
Time Toward Home: Richard John Neuhaus for Our Time
Neuhaus’s hope is the greatest example he gives us today, especially those who feel their status as exiles more keenly than they expected. Fifteen years after his death, Christians have yet to ...
Reality Is Discovered, Not Made: An Interview with Tara Isabella Burton
As this idea of self-creation, telling our own story, self-determination has become seen as the fundamental element of human life, that means those of us who participate more fully in self-creati...
A Reflection for a New Year
The antidote to despair is not perfect politics, an impossibility, a mere ideology; the cure is hope. Moral panic reveals despair at the state of things: craving the fullness of the kingdom of he...
Liberalism and the Politics of Theism
If religious believers want to protect politics from atheistic materialism, their political theory should presume at least that God made human nature good and free, and that evil comes rather fro...
Gratitude, Now More Than Ever
As we close out this year and approach the next, we should remember that gratitude is not an incidental or secondary civilizational value. It is the backbone of a free and decent civilization. Th...
Friend of the Court, Friend of the Truth: An Exchange Between Politico and Robert P. George
I am quoted extensively in Ms. Przybyla’s piece based on responses I made to inquiries she directed to me by email. So that readers can assess for themselves the fairness and integrity of Ms. P...