Winter 2026

Michel Houellebecq’s Platform

The Ground-Level Results of Welfare Reform

Both Jennifer K. Brown and Rosalind P. Petchesky raise important concerns in their replies to my paper. I will try to sort out where they misunderstand my position and where we just disagree. Brown states that I take “it as …

The Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas (June 27, 2003) has been heralded as a landmark, and indeed it is. In its 6-3 vote, the Court overturned a Texas law that criminalized “homosexual” sodomy, thereby striking down not only …

The genocidal violence in Gujarat that killed more than two thousand Muslims last year is only the latest expression of militant Hindu nationalism. An extremist movement has been growing from strength to strength for more than fifteen years. Once only …

Why does the abortion debate refuse to go away? Why, thirty years after Roe v. Wade was supposed to have settled the issue, does it remain the most politically incendiary, polarizing pressure point in U.S. electoral, judicial, and even foreign …

Canada’s decision to permit same sex-marriage and the recent Supreme Court decision striking down anti-sodomy laws have once again filled the air with familiar conservative arguments featuring “traditional morality” and “family values.” It is a rhetoric that allows talk of …

Victim Compensation After 9/11

Richard A. Posner’s Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy

At first glance, Laurie Shrage seems to be issuing a call for moderation on all sides of the abortion debate. She makes a claim that the often vacuous posturing endemic to party politics has primed us to take at face …

Sharon Hays’s Flat Broke with Children

Assessing the United Nations

Most progressives would say the abortion debate is intractable because it reflects the huge gap between conservative Christian and secular humanist values. I’d like to offer another theory, one not incompatible with this one, but a supplement to it. The …

A New Foundation for the Transatlantic Alliance

The war in Iraq has given new urgency to the debate about “American imperialism.” In fact, there hasn’t been anywhere near enough of a debate; the term is used routinely by critics of the war and routinely rejected by its …