
- Public DiscourseSociety & Culture Website
- The Witherspoon InstituteCollege & University
- Ryan T Anderson, PhDPublic Figure
2018 Summer Seminars in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton. We are now accepting applications.
Please note: One of the seminars we are offering this coming summer is for graduate students and post-docs. The other is for high schoolers.
To my Evangelical and other faithful Protestant friends: On this Reformation Day, I simply want to express my love and esteem for you and my admiration for your devotion to Jesus and his Gospel. Many of you have inspired me by your willingness to give bold and courageous witness in a culture that is increasingly hostile to Christian faith and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. From the depths of my heart I thank you for that. Let us continue to labor together for all that is good and true, right and just, beautiful, humane, and holy. And may God use our love for each other and our work together in the highest and best of causes to restore the unity of Christ's Church--East and West, Protestant and Catholic.
The next time a supporter of the latest fashionable belief, whatever it is, taunts you with the claim "history is on our side," you might consider who made those words famous. It was Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1956: "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" He was confidently predicting the ultimate triumph of communism. "I do not mean we will bury you with a shovel," he later explained, "but that your own working class will bury you."
T...hings didn't quite turn out that way. *Their* working class, beginning with the union-based Solidarity movement in Poland, buried European communism. It was a double victory, defeating not only communism, but the Hegelian view of history that it presupposes and is based upon.
The truth is that what we call "history" is filled with contingencies. Triumphs and defeats are not written in the stars. Progress is not inevitable. Nor is decline.
The future will be determined by, among other things, the deliberations, judgments, and free choices and actions of human beings, including ourselves. And we can't judge a view or movement to be right or wrong depending on whether it succeeds or fails, or seems likely to. Anyone who proposes to decide whether something is right or wrong based on a prediction of whether it is likely to be popular or unpopular, widely accepted or rejected as time goes on, simply has no idea what it means for something to be right or wrong.
Sometimes when people lose faith in God, they deify history, treating it as the equivalent of a divine judge--a quasi-personal force that gets the final say as to what is good and bad, just and unjust. "You had better get in line," they say, "with [here fill in the name of the thing that is supposed to be inevitable] or you will find yourself on the wrong side of history!" But that's a silly threat. History is an impersonal sequence of events. It is not morally normative and it has no more power to judge than does a stone outcropping or a carved and painted totem pole. To believe otherwise, as do Hegelians of both the right and left (including those who've never heard of Hegel), is to succumb to idolatry and superstition.
The idea of a "judgment of history" is contemporary secularism's vain, hopeless, and, in the end, pathetic attempt to fashion a substitute for the judgment of God.
We need to bear in mind that what matters is whether a view is sound or unsound from the moral point of view, not whether people in the future are likely to hold or reject it. What is worth worrying about is whether a view one holds or is considering is right or wrong, consistent or inconsistent with the true requirements of justice and the integral good of human beings as creatures fashioned in the image and likeness of God and, as such, bearers of profound, inherent, and equal dignity--not whether it is on the allegedly "right side of history."
I was taught by my esteemed teachers and mentors to think things through as carefully as possible and to speak the truth as God gives me to see the truth, knowing that I am fallible and must therefore avoid falling too deeply in love with my own opinions. I believe in the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family as a creature fashioned in the very image and likeness of the divine creator and ruler of all that is. I defend the lives of... the unborn, the disabled, and the frail elderly. I support marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the basic unit of society. I defend traditional norms of sexual morality that protect the integrity of marriage and the family. I defend religious freedom and the rights of conscience, as well as freedom of thought and expression and other basic civil liberties. I defend the dignity and rights of immigrants and Muslims. I believe in the exceptionalism of America's founding principles and aspirational ideals. I support private property and the market economy. I also support reasonable regulations to protect the public good, prevent exploitation and abuse, and ensure truly competitive circumstances of production and exchange. I defend the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity---both of which, I believe, serve the interests of the least well off and the vulnerable. I defend the Constitution of the United States---the actual written one. I support a robust leadership role for the United States in the world, upholding, within the strict limits of prudence, core values such as religious freedom and other human rights. I guess if you take all this stuff together, I'm bound to alienate . . . I don't know . . . almost everybody---at least in today's climate of ideological polarization. But it's where I am.
See MoreBaylor University inaugurates program named for Professor George:
Ordinary authoritarians are content to forbid people from saying things they know or believe to be true. Totalitarians insist on forcing people to say things they know or believe to be untrue.
Robert P. George updated their cover photo.
Educating students instead of trying to indoctrinate them really isn't all that hard. I don't know why it seems like such a challenge to so many professors today. It's really just a matter of exposing students to the best arguments that have been made on competing sides of disputed questions.
Let me illustrate.
Here are the readings for a typical week in my Princeton undergraduate course in civil liberties:
...Week 9: EMBRYONIC RESEARCH, ABORTION. AND INFANTICIDE
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Justice O’Connor, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Souter, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey
“We should get out of this area, where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining.” Justice Scalia in Planned Parenthood v. Casey
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Doe v. Bolton (1973)
Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)
Gonzales v. Carhart (2007)
Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”
Michael Paulsen, “Unbearable Wrongness of Roe”
Peter Singer, “Killing Babies Isn’t Always Wrong”
Michael Sandel, “Embryo Ethics: The Stem Cell Debate”
Robert George, “Embryo Ethics”
Now, I don't use the same readings every year. For the pro-choice side, I have sometimes assigned Judith Jarvis Thomson's famous article, parts of Ronald Dworkin's book on abortion and euthanasia, and essays by Michael Tooley, Mary Anne Warren, and others. For the pro-life side, I've assigned Don Marquis's famous article, parts of Francis J. Beckwith's book, and essays by Helen Alvare, Patrick Lee, and others. The key thing is to make sure that students, whatever views they happen to hold coming into class, are confronted with the most serious arguments for the competing positions and are therefore forced to actually think. At least at universities like mine, where there are not supposed to be established orthodoxies, the job of a professor is not to tell students *what* to think, but to help them learn to think carefully, critically, and . . . for themselves. Courses are not supposed to be catechism classes for *anybody's* ideology or worldview. To indoctrinate students is not only for a professor to fail in his mission, it is for him to pervert it.
Friends: I'm now entirely off the blood thinning medications (with the exception of a daily low dose aspirin tablet) that saved my life in December of 2015. The magical technology of the CT scan reveals that the "idiopathic" arterial dissection that was causing my problem has significantly healed and blood flow is more or less normal. Thanks to God and to all who prayed for me, and a very, very big thanks to my wonderful doctors in Princeton and at Weill Cornell in New York, ...especially Dr. Elliot Sambol.
"For you, O Lord, have snatched me from death,
and kept my feet from stumbling,
That I may walk before God
in the light of the living."
Bravo to my friends Terry & Betsy Considine for endowing the Antonin Scalia Professorship of Law at Harvard Law School! And bravo to HLS Dean Martha Minow and to Harvard University! What a splendid way to recognize the achievements of Justice Scalia and to honor his devotion to the Constitution and the Rule of Law.
Catholic friends and others who are interested in what's going on in the Catholic Church:
Although I was saddened by Pope Francis's decision not to renew Cardinal Gerhard Muller for a second term as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith, I take consolation and encouragement from the fact that the Holy Father has appointed as Cardinal Muller's successor Archbishop Luis Ladaria. I know both men and hold them in high esteem. I have worked for Cardinal Muller ...and with Archbishop Ladaria. Both are faithful Christians who are deeply committed to the Church's doctrinal and moral teachings.
I am not privy to the Pope's reasoning in making these decisions, but I can tell you what is NOT going on here. He is not replacing a "conservative" with a "liberal." First, these political labels mislead rather than illuminate in discussions of the work of the CDF and the teachings of the Catholic Church. Second, if by a "liberal" one means a person who favors or would support the revision or reinterpretation of the Church's moral teachings (on the sanctity of human life, for example, or on marriage and sexual morality) to make them more palatable to people who don't like them, then I can assure you that Archbishop Ladaria is not a "liberal."
This is not a big "shake up" or an ideological purge. Indeed, Archbishop Ladaria was Cardinal Muller's lieutenant at the CDF and the two men worked together beautifully, singing from exactly the same hymn book. I witnessed this myself in putting together the 2014 Humanum conference on marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. The two men were completely of one mind in upholding the biblical and natural law understandings of marriage and sexual morality. Moreover, in addressing these matters in private meetings as well as in public settings, Archbishop Ladaria spoke from conviction, not mere allegiance to his boss. I do not expect him to "grow" into someone who is prepared to jettison or soft-pedal the Church's moral witness.
Still, I am sorry to see Cardinal Muller leave the CDF. He is a treasure of the Church and a true apostle. May God reward him--all six feet seven inches of him--for his dedicated and selfless service. I know I am far from alone in feeling enormous gratitude for his work and witness.
Note to Democrats in light of their loss (by a full six points evidently) in Georgia's sixth congressional district. In conservative congressional districts, especially in the South, maybe its not such a great idea to run thirty year old left-liberals with live-in girlfriends who don't even reside in the districts they are seeking to represent (and whose employment history is "former documentary film maker)." It might make sense instead to run 43 year old Iraq or Afghanistan ...veterans who are politically moderate (or even a little, I dunno, conservative), who are married with two or three kids, and who have held jobs other than "documentary film maker." Oh, and who are able to vote for themselves because they, well, live in the district they're seeking to represent in Congress. Of course, this assumes that you can find such people who are willing to run as Democrats--and it might be that you'll have a better chance of there being such people if the party allows moderates to have leadership roles and actually influence what the party stands for. I know this is asking a lot.
See MoreToday (Wednesday, May 24) Professor George will be testifying before the US House of Representatives' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission about religious freedom and violent extremism. You can watch it live online on the Lantos Commission's website. The hearing is set to begin at 1:30 PM. Details are here:
https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/…/freedom-belief-co…
Professor George formerly served on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and was its chairman twice.
I was thrilled to learn that the American Enterprise Institute will be conferring the 2017 Irving Kristol Award on my beloved friend Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Bravo!




















