First Things RSS Feed - Robert T. Miller https://www.firstthings.com/author/robert-t-miller en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:54:42 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/robert-t-miller 60 Commonsense Morality https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/01/commonsense-morality https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/01/commonsense-morality Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 -0500 As has become distressingly clear, many people blame the Israelis for the atrocities that Hamas terrorists perpetrated on Saturday, October 7, against hundreds of civilians, including women and children, across southern Israel. The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, along with many other student groups at Harvard, declared that Israel’s “apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” The San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America condemned “Israel’s ongoing occupation and the apartheid regime” and affirmed “the Palestinian people’s . . . right to resist,” including by means of what it euphemistically called “this weekend’s events.” And the president of the Student Bar Association at New York University Law School opined that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life,” because its “state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary.”

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]]> Experience Explained https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/02/experience-explained https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/02/experience-explained Sun, 01 Feb 2015 00:00:00 -0500 True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World?
by david skeel
intervarsity, 176 pages, $12

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]]> Dogmatic Philosophy https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/dogmatic-philosophy https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/dogmatic-philosophy Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0500 Religion Without God
 by ronald dworkin
 harvard, 192 pages, $17.95

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]]> Responses to Some Comments About Reno and Capitalism https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/05/responses-to-some-comments-about-reno-and-capitalism https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/05/responses-to-some-comments-about-reno-and-capitalism Sat, 04 May 2013 14:55:17 -0400

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]]> Response to Reno https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/05/response-to-reno https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/05/response-to-reno Fri, 03 May 2013 00:01:00 -0400 Last week in this space R. R. Reno set out to challenge the foundational beliefs of economic conservatives. They must, he said, come to grasp what the postmodern left already sees: that current economic and regulatory conditions are such that market forces and the creative destruction inherent in capitalist economies will produce significant economic inequality as well as serious hardships for different groups of people from time to time, and therefore governmental responses to ameliorate these problems are sometimes justified.

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]]> Taranto on the Politics of Abortion https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/04/taranto-on-the-politics-of-abortion https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/04/taranto-on-the-politics-of-abortion Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:12:20 -0400

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]]> Eudaimonia in America https://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/04/eudaimonia-in-america https://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/04/eudaimonia-in-america Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400 America is under attack in the pages of First Things . In a recent article Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen tells us that America is founded on a philosophy of “unsustainable liberalism.” Implicit in the ideas of the American founding, he argues, are certain mistaken philosophical premises about individual choice and man’s separation from nature. Moreover, these mistakes are not merely intellectual because, as their logical consequences play out over time, the inexorable results are severe and pervasive social pathologies: a corrupt political order, a collapsing economy, and a degraded and degrading culture. Indeed, in Deneen’s account, pornography, sexual promiscuity, abortion, divorce, violent video games, cheating in academia, and Wall Street frauds all stem from the faulty political philosophy of the American founding.

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]]> Berry, Berry Quite Contrary https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/03/berry-berry-quite-contrary https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/03/berry-berry-quite-contrary Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:04:35 -0400

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]]> Thinking Clearly About Drones https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/03/thinking-clearly-about-drones https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/03/thinking-clearly-about-drones Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:03:00 -0400 Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Robert H. Latiff, a retired Major General in the United States Army now teaching at Notre Dame University, and Patrick J. McCloskey, who teaches at Loyola University in Chicago, take up the troubling question of military drones that, in the near future, will be able to deploy lethal force without direct human control. While acknowledging certain benefits of “emerging robotic armies” (e.g., fewer human casualties for the side deploying the drones), Latiff and McCloskey think that the issues involved are of tremendous moral importance:

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]]> From the April First Things: “Eudaimonia in America” https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/03/from-the-april-first-things-ldquoeudaimonia-in-americardquo https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/03/from-the-april-first-things-ldquoeudaimonia-in-americardquo Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:01:00 -0400 America is under attack in the pages of First Things . In a recent article Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen tells us that America is founded on a philosophy of “unsustainable liberalism.” Implicit in the ideas of the American founding, he argues, are certain mistaken philosophical premises about individual choice and man’s separation from nature. Moreover, these mistakes are not merely intellectual because, as their logical consequences play out over time, the inexorable results are severe and pervasive social pathologies: a corrupt political order, a collapsing economy, and a degraded and degrading culture. Indeed, in Deneen’s account, pornography, sexual promiscuity, abortion, divorce, violent video games, cheating in academia, and Wall Street frauds all stem from the faulty political philosophy of the American founding.

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