http://bigthink.com/blogs/rightly-understood <p>Rightly Understood is a conservative blog written by Peter Lawler, a professor of government at Berry College, and a former member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics. The name implies that being a true conservative is all about being realistic, seeing things as they are.&nbsp;&nbsp; We have to be right about who we are as both free and natural beings before we can have genuinely realistic moral and political opinions. Rightly understood, the common sense of ordinary people living morally responsible lives is closer to the truth than the pretensions of intellectuals who vainly exaggerate their liberated detachment from the real world we share in common.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Lawler's most recent book, "Modern and American Dignity," is available from ISI Books.</p> Sat, 18 May 2013 22:05:08 -0000 Copyright Big Think. This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/gZTV65KR-Ew/the-obama-administrations-neo-puritanical-repression http://bigthink.com/ideas/the-obama-administrations-neo-puritanical-repression Thu, 16 May 2013 13:42:43 -0400 libertarians are rightly outraged by the Obama administration’s new Puritanical speech code.  But others have either praised or blamed that same administration for its “aggressive libertarianism” when it comes to sexual behavior—its promotion of the right to contraception, its opposition any ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/the-obama-administrations-neo-puritanical-repression http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/1xzsoBqFgCI/men-fading-badly-3 http://bigthink.com/ideas/men-fading-badly-3 Fri, 10 May 2013 13:43:22 -0400 Here’s a good article that offers six explanations  for why “median-income men in America” are “in distress.”  Their incomes are dropping.  Lots of “prime-age men” have been “dropping out of the workforce altogether.”  Maybe most importantly, men have been disappearing from our institutions of ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/men-fading-badly-3 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/bY_7A70NOtQ/capitalism-has-won-and-conservatives-are-confused http://bigthink.com/ideas/capitalism-has-won-and-conservatives-are-confused Tue, 07 May 2013 22:44:27 -0400 R.R. Reno,  quite an astute conservative public intellectual, claims that those with eyes to see know that the big news these days is the global victory of capitalism.  I'm not following Reno in every respect here, but going with what I would say in support of his position. The good news is that ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/capitalism-has-won-and-conservatives-are-confused http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/6C9BvFYiI5A/moocs-and-the-stratification-of-american-higher-education http://bigthink.com/ideas/moocs-and-the-stratification-of-american-higher-education Fri, 03 May 2013 10:19:56 -0400 Generation X Goes to College, explains what's really wrong with the likely MOOCification of higher education. Studies show that learning through MOOCS and related online delivery systems isn't worse than that through the more traditional or personal ways ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/moocs-and-the-stratification-of-american-higher-education http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/UsR_7okFsZk/having-issues-with-issues-management-speak-vs-higher-education-2 http://bigthink.com/ideas/having-issues-with-issues-management-speak-vs-higher-education-2 Sun, 28 Apr 2013 09:40:51 -0400 here's a funny article on the sheer silliness and passive-aggressive hostility of the jargon that dominates the worlds of management, consultants, marketing, and all that.  That world, it seems to me, is divided between people who use that language earnestly in the belief that it is a sign of ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/having-issues-with-issues-management-speak-vs-higher-education-2 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/HWiVaQBq9Io/mom-dad-and-happiness http://bigthink.com/ideas/mom-dad-and-happiness Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:50:58 -0400 The Atlantic does the best job of popularizing scientific studies.  For one thing, it's remarkably unideological.  Both the left and the right—and the libertarians and the traditionalists—can find stuff that reaffirms—and stuff that challenges—their cherished perspectives ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/mom-dad-and-happiness http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/eGLsDf8WIQQ/liberal-education-as-civic-disengagement http://bigthink.com/ideas/liberal-education-as-civic-disengagement Fri, 19 Apr 2013 22:51:27 -0400 Jonathan Marks in Inside Higher Ed, the daily online newspaper of higher education.  Marks writes at a level several pay grades higher than most educational experts, and he contributes memorably to the continuing project of deconstruction of the ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/liberal-education-as-civic-disengagement http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/a7Ch_fT_GbU/the-right-to-polygamy http://bigthink.com/ideas/the-right-to-polygamy Tue, 16 Apr 2013 11:50:17 -0400 Slate's Jillian Keenan argues, with a good deal of sense, that nobody should be afraid of legalized ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/the-right-to-polygamy http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/AQ2GACWrkaI/immortality-is-not-a-human-possibility http://bigthink.com/ideas/immortality-is-not-a-human-possibility Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:05:50 -0400 John Gray.  He says don't think about immortality as something you can achieve through your own efforts.  Don't think that by prudently avoiding all the risk factors and gulping down lots of supplements you can ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/immortality-is-not-a-human-possibility http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bigthink/blogs/rightly-understood/~3/EE3ZUUmuoxI/conservatives-love-science-more http://bigthink.com/ideas/conservatives-love-science-more Tue, 09 Apr 2013 10:11:48 -0400 So I've been thinking a lot about the charge that conservatives are bad because they hate science.  But it's just not true.  Here's a beginning of my explanation why. We conservatives say that the middle-class college or university of the libertarians doesn’t respect science for what it is.  In ...

Read More]]> Peter Lawler http://bigthink.com/ideas/conservatives-love-science-more