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The Right to Be Yourself?

If authentic naming or identifying is a strictly private, self-governed enterprise, what is there that is truly public? If my public persona is entirely under my control, and if I can die to my old self and rise to my new self any time I choose and in whatever manner I choose, and if indeed I am not to be burdened by my old “dead” name, as the Dean of Law says, in what sense is my persona public? Continue Reading »

Letter to 
a Campus Activist

You appear confident, but are unsure. You appear angry, but are afraid. You appear righteous, but are morally adrift. You are a college student, and showing confidence, anger, and righteousness is part of coming of age. This is not a period of exploration, as the authorities in your life . . . . Continue Reading »

Notre Dame’s Deal with the Devil

Tim Kaine is a Harvard Law graduate, but he and other pro-choice Catholic politicians owe much to Notre Dame. As Matthew Franck has observed in First Things, Mario Cuomo’s 1984 “personally opposed but won’t impose” speech at the university was a “watershed moment” for pro-choice . . . . Continue Reading »

Letters

Human WrongsR. R. Reno, agreeing with Yuval Levin, believes we must rid ourselves of our nostalgia (“Public Square,” May). It is banal, of course, to suggest that we cannot live in the past. But is it nostalgic to yearn for a time when workers enjoyed a measure of security, families were intact, . . . . Continue Reading »

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