Two new articles on very big questions today – First Thoughts carries my response to David French’s declaration that social conservatives risk becoming “the cheapest date in American politics”:

I wish I could be as optimistic as French about the future of social conservatism. He thinks that the choice of whether to become a cheap date is still before us. I wonder whether it hasn’t already passed. That’s one of the lessons of the fairy tales: The moment you become aware that you’re making a moral choice with titanic consequences is the moment after you’ve made the choice and sealed your fate.

And the newly renmaed EdChoice carries Part 1 of my new series on how to design an accountability system for education in a free society where we do not agree about the highest questions in life:

Our freedom to disagree about transcendent things does not mean that public policy can escape the responsibility to ask what is good, true and beautiful. In fact, the very assertion that it is good to have the freedom to disagree about transcendent things is itself an assertion about what is good, i.e. about transcendent things.

Any education policy embodies, and to a degree imposes, some moral view—even if it is only the view that the freedom to disagree is good. Indeed, it is in education where our public policy must have the strongest moral commitment to freedom and diversity if we want to sustain a society characterized by freedom and diversity.

The challenge of pluralism is also an opportunity for us to discover a fresh vision of human potential that embraces the freedom to disagree about the highest things.

As always, your thoughts on these matters are much appreciated!