Friday, September 29, 2023 | 
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Ralph Hancock

Contributor

Ralph Hancock is a professor of political science at Brigham Young University and president of the John Adams Center for the Study of Faith, Philosophy and Public Affairs. His views are his own.

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Opinion
The coronavirus is exposing our world of pleasure. Is there hope it still has a soul?
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
Elizabeth Warren and liberalism ridicule the defense of marriage. Are you cool with that?
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
On Mitt and Mike: Statesmanship and the party of the angels
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
Ricky Gervais pops the ideological balloon
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
Thanks be to God for the spirit of Christmas
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
No truer way to see reality than through moral agency
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
Pantheism is a danger on democracy’s horizon
‘Pantheism’ is Tocqueville’s name for the condition in which democracy becomes its own God.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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Opinion
What is the cost of fusing knowledge and power?
The vocation of the knower is transformed by the incentives that drive the world’s material transformation; the scientist takes his place among the elites of society, with a legitimate expectation of sharing in the rewards of productivity and the privileges of status.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
From funerals I love to gather insight on what really matters in life – and on what only seems to matter.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Funerals, rock stars and the meaning of life
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
Isn’t it wrong and even dangerous to affirm “conquer we must,” even if we add the qualification “when our cause it is just”? How can we let accidental and mortal attachments to a particular homeland and its ways distract us from what is essential in our h
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Is it wrong to have Christian patriotism?
Our patriotism may sometimes half-conceal our Christian humanism. But it half-discloses it, too.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
There remains precious little conservative liberalism to conserve, and so we must rise to the higher challenge of a liberal conservatism — the challenge of re-grounding freedom in a classical and Christian concern for the common good.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: What is left for modern conservatism to conserve?
The reason conservatives now disagree bitterly about the meaning of conservatism is that, alas, it is not clear just what is left to conserve of the morally and religiously grounded and limited freedom that once defined America.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
An image from the Church's Bible video series depicts the Resurrected Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Easter and the transformative conception of salvation
Searching with only the mind may find out God, but only as a vague general principle. Truly finding salvation requires God’s infinite love.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
FILE - Arthur Brooks speaks during a Deseret News podcast in Salt Lake City on Friday, Oct. 12, 2018.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Is civility overrated?
At a time in our national life when everyone can see that the virtue of civility is in alarmingly short supply, no one makes a better case for this virtue than American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
"The School of Athens" by Raphael.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Critical thinking and the fifth commandment
Modern educational theory is eager to press the distinction between the learning of mere “facts” and a more glorious initiation in the power of “critical thinking.”
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
Mitt Romney, Republican U.S. Sen.-elect from Utah, speaks to an election night party after his victory Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, in Orem, Utah. (AP Photo/Gene Sweeney Jr)
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Politeness, loyalty and presidential character
Few were surprised to learn last week that Sen. Mitt Romney (still) has concerns about President Donald Trump’s character.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
Christmas is a Christian holiday, obviously. But people of good will everywhere can celebrate its central meaning.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Christmas is for everyone
The true love we celebrate at Christmas is a revelation of Christianity. But it is not just for Christians: it is offered to all mankind and speaks to the soul of every human being.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
French President Emmanuel Macron, right, meets with British Prime Minister Theresa May to discuss Brexit issues at the Fort de Bregancon in Bornes-les-Mimosas, southern France, Friday Aug. 3, 2018. (Sebastien Nogier, pool via AP)
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Trump’s ‘nationalism’ pitted against Macron’s ‘patriotism’
The fundamental issue of our times came noisily to the surface in Paris on Sunday. No light was shed on it, but at least it made an appearance: the question of “nationalism” vs. “globalism.”
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, left, before a ceremonial swearing in in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 8, 2018.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: ‘Mere constitutionalism’ is a not a partisan theory
It is amusing to witness the liberal hand-wringing over the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
Serena Williams, left, and Naomi Osaka, of Japan, pose for photos during the trophy ceremony after Osaka defeated Williams in the women's final of the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018, in New York.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: ‘Beyond politics’ is only an illusion
Everything has become political because we have succumbed to the illusion that politics can overcome all limitations and, yes, all inequalities of the human condition.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
It is precisely because sex involves both lower passions and more sublime possibilities than real estate negotiations that it has traditionally been regulated by complex and subtle cultural codes in no way reducible to a binary yes/no principle.
Opinion
Ralph Hancock: Consent alone will never provide an adequate sexual or political foundation
In the sexual as well as in the political arena, the policy of consent leads inevitably to the question, what counts as consent?
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
In this June 1, 2017, file photo, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for an official group portrait to include new Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, top row, far right at the Supreme Court Building in Washington. Seated, from left are, Associate
Opinion
If the Supreme Court isn’t our sovereign, who is?
We have traded constitutional self-government under “the laws of nature and nature’s God” for the promise of ever-expanding rights under a “living” (that is, plastic) Constitution.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
The Black Book of Communism (a meticulously documented scholarly study first published in France in 1997), puts the body count of Marxist-Leninist tyrannies at about 100 million.
Opinion
200 years, apparently, wasn’t long enough to decide Marx was wrong
The study of Karl Marx should indeed be considered essential to modern Western intellectual history. That doesn’t mean his ideas were right.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
People rally to show support for undocumented immigrants and call for immigration reform at the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City on Saturday, March 17, 2018.
Opinion
The tension between morality and security in the immigration debate
We have no right to demand charity of other people, or to determine the reasonable limits of another country’s openness to immigration.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
One college professor recently remarked, “students have been indoctrinated for the first 18 years of their lives by their parents and by their churches; we only have four years to undo the damage.”
Opinion
Vulgar elitism and empty populism
Our progressive elites are an anti-aristocratic aristocracy. That is, their authority is based not on the claim to some virtue or some truth, but on their denial that there is any such thing.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
People walk through downtown Washington, D.C., during the Women's March on Washington on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017.
Opinion
Exploring the limits of nurture, nature and feminism
Any feminism that cannot embrace the nurturing of civilized differences between men and women remains a radical feminism, whether it knows it or not.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
President Donald Trump speaks with Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., during a meeting with lawmakers on immigration policy, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Opinion
Donald Trump, President Monson and the times we live in
It may seem inappropriate, if not obscene, to mention President Donald Trump in the same column with Thomas S. Monson. Their characters are as unlike as can be imagined.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
In this Sept. 20, 2017, file photo, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., listens during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. Franken, facing fresh allegations of sexual misconduct and vanishing support from fellow Democrats, said he will resign.
Opinion
The limits of today’s emerging sexuality
Suddenly, everyone now passionately agrees (or professes to agree) that men as a class are at least potential sexual aggressors, and that women as a class are innocent victims. Some important truths are missing from this picture.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
John Trumbull’s “The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.”
Opinion
Populism and democratic elitism
Who rules in a democracy? The word itself is of course supposed to answer the question: democracy is the rule of the people. But who counts as “the people”?
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
Portrait of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). We ought to find it a little disconcerting that this distinction between old-fashioned morality, keyed to a higher purpose, and social justice as a secular convention was invented by the great English theorist of abs
Opinion
Ethics, morality and us
Have you noticed how often we use the practically equivalent words “morality” and “ethics” to reinforce each other? The formula is a little puzzling as well as amusing, since it’s far from clear what one term adds to the othe
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein, who turned 84 June 22, 2017, is showing no signs of slowing down and is raising lots of campaign money, even if she hasn't declared her intention to run again in 2018.
Opinion
Secular liberals should check their own ‘dogma’
Secular progressives who don the mask of neutral rationality in order to marginalize those they disagree with are the most dangerous dogmatists because they cannot see that they worship their own secular gods.
By Ralph Hancock, Contributor
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