Human Rights

Marc Andreessen’s “It’s Time To Build” is a hopeful cri de coeur in this time of pandemic. Americans, and American elite leadership specifically, need what strikes me as essentially a spiritual awakening, and Andreessen speaks to that in his own way by pointing out that an ugly aspect of American life that this virus has revealed is a sort of cultural impotence: Every Western institution was unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, despite many prior warnings. This monumental failure of institutional effectiveness will reverberate for the rest of the decade, but it’s not too early to ask why, and what we need to do about it. Many of us would like to pin the cause on one political party or another, Read More ›

How often we hear of human rights and how little we hear of human responsibilities. How can we have one without the other? Every right suggests a claim and every claim suggests a responsibility. What makes human rights “work” is our ability to discern when particular human rights claims ought to be responsibly fulfilled and when particular claims are, in fact, a threat to either the good of the individual or the good of society. This is what Ryan Anderson was getting at recently when he pointed out that rights are “grounded in and thus limited by the demands of justice and common good“. An appeal to human rights that places an inordinate emphasis on, for instance, autonomy and individualism, Read More ›

I’m excited to join Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Let me share my approach to the issues of human dignity, liberty, and equality and the moral duties that the Center exists to consider and advance. I believe that when it comes to issues of human life we’re generally engaging conflicts that are neither unresolvable nor destined for stalemate. We’re debating issues that matter. We can lose sight of this due to the tendency to throw our hands into the air over the seemingly complex nature of many human life issues, content to “agree to disagree” because “it’s complicated.” For those determined to advance human dignity, liberty, and equality, settling for this false peace is, in fact, a surrender to Read More ›

China is the world champion at “cancel culture.” Only when the communist tyranny cancels you, you aren’t just hounded off social media or pushed out of a job in the media or academia. You are literally canceled; executed, organ harvested, imprisoned, forced into a concentration camp, or excluded from all social participation in society. The targets of this despotism are primarily religious believers — Falun Gong, Uyghur Muslims, and, most recently, Christians. Millions have been victimized by these vicious pogroms in recent years — and it appears the persecution has just gotten started. Why is the Chinese government acting so ruthlessly against its major religions? People need meaning, not a strong suit of materialistic communism. But as the Bible states, faith can move Read More ›