Matthew J. Franck is Contributing Editor of Public Discourse. He is also Associate Director of the James Madison Program and Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University, Senior Fellow at the Witherspoon Institute, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, where he chaired the department and taught courses in political philosophy, constitutional law, and American politics. Franck has written, edited, or contributed to books published by the University Press of Kansas, Lexington Books, Oxford University Press, and Cambridge University Press, and has published articles and reviews in American Political Thought, the Review of Politics, the Journal of Church and State, the Catholic Social Science Review, National Affairs, The New Atlantis, First Things, the Weekly Standard, Touchstone, the Claremont Review of Books, National Review, and Public Discourse. On Twitter he is @MatthewJFranck.
The plight of the Palestinians is indeed a tragic one. Peace with their stronger neighbor will not come easily to them. Only a cessation of terrorism, of attacks on civilians, and of demonization of the Jewish people will enable them to make any substantial progress. Sad to say, the first steps may have to be taken by the Western elites who have learned to make anti-Semitism fashionable again, and have a great deal of unlearning to do.
Date posted: 2024-04-01
A temptation today is that we will "silo" ourselves, choosing to listen only to voices congenial to our own views, and walling off our access to other points of view. This temptation to live in a cozy silo can afflict our book reading habits as well, which is too bad. You won't know how to shore up the weaknesses in your own arguments unless you encounter critics of them, and you won't know even what is mistaken in others' perspectives until you grant their strongest form a patient hearing
Date posted: 2022-10-10
The point of recent attacks on Dr. Paul McHugh is not to take him down. Rather, it is to signal to every other mental health and medical professional in the country - from psychiatrists to endocrinologists to surgeons to therapists and counselors - that the ideology of transgenderism will brook no dissent.
Date posted: 2020-05-23
Some prejudices are good to have, some are bad, some are indifferent. Acquiring an education is learning to discriminate the good prejudices one carries about from the bad ones - to keep the former, as confirmed by knowledge, and discard the latter, as condemned by knowledge.
Date posted: 2019-09-07
Ryan T. Anderson has written the definitive book on the transgender phenomenon - ranging across medicine, psychology, culture, sociology, law, and public policy. In doing so, he may have saved the minds and bodies - indeed, the very lives - of people he will never know.
Date posted: 2018-02-25
Vote as if your ballot determines nothing whatsoever - except the shape of your own character.
Date posted: 2016-08-20
What the State essentially does, when it requires us to be parties to the lie that a man can marry a man, is to deny the anterior reality of marriage itself. It says, "Marriage is what we say it shall be," and that implies, "Families are what we say they are," and that implies, "There are no zones of natural authority outside the supervision and regulation and management of the State."
Date posted: 2015-01-11
A New Jersey judge's contorted and nonsensical decision that the state is responsible for the federal government's failure to recognize same-sex marriage highlights the irrationality that permeates the campaign for "marriage equality."
Date posted: 2014-03-19
Marriage and religious freedom will stand or fall together.
Date posted: 2013-10-15
Kermit Gosnell has been the equivalent of the American slave-dealer--someone who has done work rendered absolutely necessary by the twisted laws of his regime, but who has nevertheless been ignored or regarded with unease, and even repulsion, by his fellow citizens.
Date posted: 2013-07-19
Michael Klarman's history of the push for same-sex marriage shows just how recently it's developed and how its leaders lack substantive arguments for the nature and purpose of marriage itself.
Date posted: 2013-02-12
The case for same-sex marriage, as articulated in a new book that debates the issue, still refuses to recognize that civil society needs real marriage, as it has always existed, to preserve itself.
Date posted: 2012-12-13
If tradition is not a good reason to limit marriage to a man and a woman, it is also not a good reason to limit it to only two people.
Date posted: 2012-02-20
Race and sex play qualitatively different roles in our interactions with each other, making sex rationally relevant to our social and political policies in a way that race is not.
Date posted: 2011-08-25
After publishing articles recently in the Washington Post and First Things, both arguing that the defenders of conjugal marriage between a man and a woman should not be tarred as irrational bigots, "haters," or "theocrats" by the advocates of same-sex marriage, I received e-mail messages from likeminded friends hailing me for my "courage." I was grateful for their appreciation, but a little mystified at what I took to be overstatement. I find little reason to hail the "courage" of someone who defends the consensus view of the whole history of human civilization -- that marriage is a bedrock social institution that unites a man and a woman in order to make a family -- as rational and well intended.
Date posted: 2011-06-20