Humanize | Page 19

A friend calls you up to let you know that she’s thinking of ending her life. What do you tell her? She’s getting older and has experienced a life-threatening (but not terminal) condition for many years. She feels beaten down, alone, and like she’s too great a burden for those who were once closest to her, but who’ve generally stopped visiting in recent years. She’s looking to you for good counsel. If you’re like most, you wouldn’t respond by affirming her hopelessness. If you’re like most, you wouldn’t respond by enthusiastically affirming her “right to die” or by encouraging her to pursue a means of suicide. Instead, you would recognize her vulnerability. Instead, you would strive to stand alongside her 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 the 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 Read More ›

We have published many pieces over the years at Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism through the popular media advocating for human exceptionalism and defending the importance of humanity. That effort will not only continue, but hopefully, accelerate in 2020 and beyond. However, as I look to the future and the growing threats to human dignity, liberty, and equality which we founded the Center on Human Exceptionalism to address, I think it’s important to start conducting a conversation in a place of our own where we can consider the threats and opportunities to human dignity and human rights in culture, law, and policy in a more holistic way. Enter Humanize from Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. We hope 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 ›