This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis. That case involved a website designer named Lorie Smith who believed that a provision of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act violated her rights under the … Continue reading In Defense of Free Speech
“We’ve long lived in a country where religious freedom was secure, and we didn’t need to give it much thought,” writes Luke Goodrich. “Now we’re realizing the country is changing and we might not enjoy the same degree of religious … Continue reading The Battle over Religions Liberty in America | Influence Podcast
Religious freedom is one of America’s most cherished values. It is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and protected by a thick web of statutory laws and judicial decisions. The same holds true at the state level. … Continue reading Free to Believe | Book Review
Everyone, it seems, uses Facebook and Twitter…and hates them. The Left hates them because the Russians used them to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hilary Clinton and give it to Donald Trump. (That’s the allegation anyway, highly improbable in … Continue reading The Social Media Upheaval | Book Review
Greg Lukianoff, Freedom from Speech, Encounter Broadside No. 39 (New York: Encounter Books, 2014). Paperback | Kindle Freedom of speech is a bedrock American principle. It is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but it cannot be reduced to that amendment. Instead, as Greg Lukianoff points out in this Encounter Broadside, it reflects “cultural values” and “intellectual habits,” such as giving the other side a fair hearing, reserving judgment, tolerating opinions that offend or anger us, believing that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, and recognizing that even people whose points of view we … Continue reading Review of ‘Freedom from Speech’ by Greg Lukianoff
Steven D. Smith, The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Hardback / Kindle In America, religious freedom is often named “the first freedom.” One reason reason for this name is religious freedom’s pride of place in the First Amendment. Only after stating, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” does that amendment go on to prohibit congressional laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress … Continue reading Review of ‘The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom’ by Steven D. Smith
From Our First Right: Religious Liberty | Public Discourse: At the heart of the American model of public life is an essentially religious vision of man, government, and God. This model has given us a free, open, and non-sectarian society marked by an astonishing variety of cultural and religious expressions. But our system’s success does not result from the procedural mechanisms our Founders put in place. Our system works precisely because of the moral assumptions that undergird it. And those moral assumptions have a religious grounding. Continue reading Our First Right: Religious Liberty | Public Discourse
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