The mistake that some Catholic leaders made in 1995 and 1996 is the same mistake some seem to be making today, which is to equate more federal spending on programs for the poor with the morally superlative approach from the perspective of Catholic social teaching. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5388?utm_source=RTA+Berg-Capretta+Budget&utm_campaign=email&utm_medium=email Read more

Gerald McDermott Why should we be opposed to same-sex marriage as long as we don’t permit it in our churches? We already have clear biblical reasons for not allowing same-sex marriage in our churches. But what about out in the public square, where we cannot argue from the Bible? Does gay marriage affect our own marriages? There actually are good reasons–using rational arguments apart from the Bible–for opposing same-sex marriage in society as a whole. In short, gay marriage is... Read more

By UWE SIEMON-NETTO A nauseating remark by Donald Trump on Fox News about Germany this week has confirmed my suspicion that today’s American and European conservatives are living on different planets. Discussing the Euro crisis on Greta van Susteren’s “On the Record” show, Trump said: “Germany is trying to take over the world economically; they weren’t able to do it militarily. (more…) Read more

The president will now wage an all-out campaign of calling Mitt Romney an “anti-gay” bigot for opposing what he himself would not embrace until five minutes ago. But given the track record of victories for the defense of marriage in thirty-one states, and the still-tentative declaration of the president, it is clear that he knows he is running a risky strategy. What he knows, we should know too. And we should know that if we keep our heads, and don’t... Read more

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R–WI) is being criticized by the secular and religious left for comments he made about the role his Catholic faith played in crafting his budget. The most outrageous criticism is that it played any role at all. The reactions to Ryan’s comments should call to mind three important things: (1) religious values should be welcomed in the public square, (2) not all religious values are based on divine revelation, and (3) translating moral principles... Read more

A new poll from Virginia, a key swing state, suggests that evangelicals will help put Mitt Romney in the White House this November. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/05/evangelicals-and-the-coming-romney-victory Read more

A university lecturer and single mother of two, Ismat Abdul-Khaleq, was arrested in the West Bank last week for criticizing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook. Perhaps this is what Abbas meant when he said during a recent interview with al-Jazeera that his party, Fatah, was a political and ideological copy of the terrorist group Hamas. His words: “In all honesty, there are no disagreements between us.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/silence-on-palestinian-censorship/2012/04/05/gIQAZ3khxS_story.html Read more

“When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder,” wrote Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences, “we are affirming in effect that sentiment is anterior to reason.” Weaver meant by “sentiment” something far more profound and illuminating than a fleeting emotion: “Surmounting all is an intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality, and this is the sanction to which both ideas and beliefs are ultimately referred for verification.” To put it another way, “culture is originally a matter of yea-saying,”... Read more

The two of us, an Israeli and a Palestinian, went to South Africa recently to speak about the Middle East. For understandable reasons, South Africa is a major source for the “Israel is apartheid” accusation; it stems from the fact that many South Africans, especially blacks, relate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to their own history of racial discrimination. http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/an-israeli-and-a-palestinian-scathed-by-south-africa-apartheid-rhetoric-1.428234 Read more

The day after Jon was born, a doctor told Jon’s parents that the first question for them was whether they intended to take Jon home from the hospital. Nonplussed, they said they thought that is what parents do with newborns. Not doing so was, however, still considered an acceptable choice for parents who might prefer to institutionalize or put up for adoption children thought to have necessarily bleak futures. Whether warehoused or just allowed to languish from lack of stimulation... Read more