by In this essay, which appears in the Dec. 19 issue of Our Sunday Visitor, I argue in favor of the Dream Act.
Read the full postArchive for the 'Michael Scaperlanda' Category
Attorney and commentator Jennifer Braceras has an op-ed in today’s Boston Herald responding to Time Magizine’s recent cover story entitled “Who Needs Marriage” and a recent Pew Study on the state of marriage and out of wedlock births in the United States. If she is correct in her assessment, as I think she is, what can be [...]
Read the full postPatrick Deneen’s lecture “In Defense of Culture“, posted on the Front Porch Republic, argues that “liberalism, in its many forms – whether classical or progressive, whether purportedly on the Right or the Left – shares one basic feature in common, namely a hostility to cultural forms that are a pre-modern inheritance.” Since I found it enlightening and [...]
Read the full postMy OU colleague, Allen Hertzke, has an important and insightful article, “The Supreme Court and Religious Liberty: How a 1990 decision has come back to haunt us, and how its damage might be undone,” in the most recent Weekly Standard. Comments on his analysis are welcome. (Cross posted on MOJ)
Read the full postIn an essay, posted on Public Discourse this morning, I weigh in on the immigration law recently enacted in Arizona, putting that problematic law in the context of a quarter century of failure by the federal government to stem the tide of illegal immigration. Recognizing the dignity of every human being and the duty of the state [...]
Read the full postI hope to find the time later to address the Arizona Immigration Law directly. For now I want use a Chesterton quote to reflect briefly on a potential motivating factors behind the law. To be clear, I think the new Arizona law is terrible and terribly mistaken at many levels. But, I also don’t want to fall into demonizing the common person who supported it.
Read the full postSecularists who desire the bundle of rights, liberty, and equality associated with the secular liberal state have a serious intellectual problem, namely, what is the source of these rights, liberty, and equality? With only a very thin conception of the person and the person’s place in community, the secularist struggles for thick answers to these pressing questions.
Theists, and particularly Christians, in the United States have two different problems. First, we have a proposed source of rights, liberty, and equality based on our thick understanding of the human person and her place in community, but our reasons are rooted in faith or a faith based philosophy that is not accessible to all. In short, in our diverse and pluralistic society, we suffer from seemingly non-universally accessible reasons for acting this way rather than that. Second, we have a reputation, deserved or not, of being intolerant of those who seek to lead lives that diverge from traditional Christian teaching and practice.
