It’s easy to be cynical about American politics. It’s easy to think we can safety check out. Many have concluded that politics doesn’t matter.
That’s a mistake. Laws and regulations form the institutional and even the physical shape of the world we live in every day, and there is no neutral institutional framework. What does the law punish and reward? What’s permitted? What’s forbidden? These are moral and not just political questions, and the answers our leaders give determine the patterns of our common life.
Wrong-headed and evil policies damage real people. How many families are poor or homeless because politicians enacted foolish economic or housing policies? How many babies have been killed, how many women’s lives ruined because our leaders permit abortion? How many Christians have been forced out of the Middle East because of our military adventuring there?
Not all of us need to be activists, but we should be engaged in politics for the same reason we put on a Thanksgiving dinner at low-rent apartments or put up a homeless man at the hotel: Because our Lord Jesus tells us, Love your neighbor.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
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If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
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