Free Republic

Segregation was based on irrational, peculiar prejudice. By contrast, protecting marriage between one man and one woman is based on universal truths about our human nature.As readers of Public Discourse know, some proponents of homosexual pseudogamy now assert that argument is no longer necessary. We do not argue with segregationists, they say. We ignore them, we scorn them. They are not worth our time. They are mad or wicked. So too our courageous Ryan Anderson, who says that marriage by nature requires a man and a woman. “Shut up,” they explain. I fear that our age is so enslaved to...

The word "right," used as a noun, means, my dictionary tells me, a "just, or lawful claim." Claim on what? On whatever I want and can lawfully have. I have a right to life, that is, a just claim on life. I have a right to liberty, a just claim to be free. I have a right to property, a just claim on land, goods, or other wealth. My right is not life, liberty, property, but rather my proper and just claim upon these things. The distinction is important. It was understood by our revolutionary forefathers but is widely misunderstood...

The U.S. Constitution, as its framers understood it, was a means to an end. It was crafted and adopted for the sake of achieving the natural-law principles referred to in the Declaration of Independence. The progressives understood this very clearly as well. The robust regulatory and redistributive aims of the progressive policy agenda were inevitably at odds with the natural-law theory of the founding. This basic fact makes understandable Woodrow Wilson’s admonition (in an address ostensibly honoring Thomas Jefferson) that, “if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.” Do not, in other words,...

The US Constitution is much more important, and in much greater danger than most people realize. I will discuss both issues in this article. Some people believe, and I am one of them, that there is one short passage in our founding documents that encapsulates, enshrines, and defines what is so unique and important about the US Constitution, and the United States of America. Oddly enough it is not to be found in the Constitution at all – it is in “The Declaration of Independence.” I am talking about the preamble to the Declaration – specifically the first sentence. Without...

I don’t usually read Smithsonian magazine. In fact, to be honest, I never read Smithsonian. However, recently, a kind neighbor dropped off a stack of Smithsonian magazines, and as I leafed through them briefly, something on the cover of the January issue caught my eye: a huge photo of a baby with the provoking words “The New Morality.” As a Catholic living in what has been called the post-Christian era, I naturally felt my interest piqued at what a secular magazine would say about morality. Moreover, as a mother, I felt the irresistible attraction to all things pertaining to babies....

It is no secret that our culture as a whole is descending into an ever-deeper sexual confusion. Recently two examples of this were in the news.In the first article which I summarize here, a Canadian couple have chosen to raise (impose upon?) their child a “genderless” upbringing. For now, they have refused to tell any of their family or friends the sex of their child, whom they call “Storm,” and groom and dress the infant child ambiguously.I would like to provide excerpts of a much longer article here and comment as we go. As usual, the article is in bold,...

Do our rights come from the government, or do they come from God or from natural law? The founders of the American Republic thought our rights came from God or from natural law. As such, our inalienable rights are the rights of all mankind and are universal, changeless, and applicable to all people, at all times and in all places. In terms of natural law, if man has a nature, then human rights must be in accord with that nature and must be necessary to the flourishing of that nature. If our rights are thus innate and fixed for all...

One of the oldest notions in the history of mankind is that some people are to give orders and others are to obey. The powerful elite believe that they have wisdom superior to the masses and that they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Their agenda calls for an attack on the free market and what it implies — voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, free markets are replaced with economic planning and regulation that is nothing less than the...

<p>Will you be celebrating Natural Law this July 4th? You should be. Your Founding Fathers did.</p> <p>In declaring their independence and asserting their God-given rights, the Founding Fathers—particularly the pen of Thomas Jefferson—acknowledged the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”</p>

Over the past couple of months, in the pages of First Things – both real and virtual – as well as in a few other online venues, an important and animated conversation has been occurring over the nature and limits of natural law reasoning. It started with an essay written by the eminent theologian David Bentley Hart (author of the magnificent book Atheist Delusions). His critics have included philosophers Edward Feser (here and here) and R. J. Snell (here and here).  Among Hart’s sympathizers are Rod Dreher, Peter Leithart, and Alan Jacobs, a soon-to-be colleague of mine at Baylor.The strength...

In the following post I seek to lay out a few of the biblical texts related to the Church teaching against contraception. This is not a post intended to give a full defense of the teaching against contraception. I have done that elsewhere, e.g. HERE & HERE & HEREThis post is intended only to set for the kind of biblical logic and background for the teaching which comes to us from antiquity. In fact, no Christian denomination prior to 1930 ever taught the contraception was anything but sinful. The first denomination to depart from this received teaching was the Anglicans,...

The old adage that one lie leads to another is never more apparent than when modern American public officials deal with issues arising from sexual immorality. President Bill Clinton, for example, started a chain of lies when he decided to have an adulterous relationship with a White House intern. Clinton first lied to his wife, then to a federal court, then to the American people. Nor could Clinton's lies, delivered as president, be his lies alone. His partisans in Congress either had to abandon him or add another link to the chain of lies by declaring that perjury and obstruction...

The old adage that one lie leads to another is never more apparent than when modern American public officials deal with issues arising from sexual immorality. President Bill Clinton, for example, started a chain of lies when he decided to have an adulterous relationship with a White House intern. Clinton first lied to his wife, then to a federal court, then to the American people. Nor could Clinton's lies, delivered as president, be his lies alone. His partisans in Congress either had to abandon him or add another link to the chain of lies by declaring that perjury and...

Culture’s shifting sands on moral standards by Gilbert T. Sewell Sixty years ago juvenile delinquency and what to do about it suddenly drew a round of national soul searching. We no longer even use the term. We think in terms of juvenile monsters. Yesteryear’s hoods and troublemakers seem quaint and innocent beside today’s appalling school murders, gang rapes and teenage mayhem... ...Put together violent, porn-saturated electronic entertainment and armed, shame-free, unparented young men. Crazy things happen... ...Who is delinquent? A sociopath? A truant, an unwed mother, a rapist of drunken and unconscious girls, a meth addict or a mass murderer?...

The French Revolution of 1789 was based on the ideological philosophy of the Enlightenment summarized in the famous trilogy, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” By imposing full equality on society, the advocates of this philosophy sought to bring about complete freedom and an idyllic brotherhood among men. The Guillotine’s “Fraternity” As is well known, the immediate effects of that equality were the execution of King Louis XVI, his sister Princess Elizabeth and Queen Marie Antoinette; thousands of nobles were guillotined; clergy were persecuted and massacred or had to go underground. The peasants of the Vendee who rose up in defense of altar...

Celebrate Life September-October 2012 Today’s ‘palliative care’ disrespects the natural lawBy Elizabeth D. Wickham, PhD The natural law tells us that, in the context of health care, 1) food and water are basic treatment and care, and should not be withdrawn lightly; 2) morphine must not be used aggressively to hasten death when a patient is not near the time of death; and 3) pain management must be properly titrated to avoid overdose. In the early 1980s, the “right-to-die” movement identified a serious roadblock to its agenda: Society still considered the provision of nutrition/hydration as “basic care.” Journalist Diana Lynne...

More than any Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama in his writings and speeches has worked out an impressive interpretation of American history that culminates in modern liberalism. It also culminates, not incidentally, in him. As a writer, Obama’s strength is telling tales, and his story of America mixes together social, intellectual, and political history. It begins and keeps contending with the Founding– with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He tries to tell a new story about the country that acknowledges, and then contextualizes, traditional views in ways that are meant to be reassuring but that point...

The Democrats still have a religion problem. No, not that religion problem. They just can’t seem to get past wanting the blessing of a larger-than-life religious figure — even when that figure has called their policies “un-American” and depicts their core beliefs as antithetical to our most cherished freedoms.The circumstances leading up to Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s benediction last night were politically fraught, but they didn’t have to be. First, Mitt Romney announced Dolan would be giving the closing benediction at the Republican National Convention. (At the time, I wrote that the move signaled Dolan had chosen sides with the GOP....

Thank you Governor Romney, Ann. I am deeply honored and excited to join you as your running mate. Mitt Romney is a leader with the skills, the background and the character that our country needs at a crucial time in its history. Following four years of failed leadership, the hopes of our country, which have inspired the world, are growing dim; and they need someone to revive them. Governor Romney is the man for this moment; and he and I share one commitment: we will restore the dreams and greatness of this country. I want you to meet my family....

One of the great losses to Western Culture is the increasing refusal to accept that there is a Natural Law to which we may commonly refer. This is especially problematic in pluralistic and secularist societies like the post-Christian West where reference to the sacred text of Scripture is not considered authoritative by many.Hence, it has been the long practice of the Church, even before secularizing trends to base her witness to the truth not only on Scripture but also on Natural Law. The recourse to such a basis for discussion is now largely impossible for us, as most secularists have...