Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

A new French law is unlikely to deter those who hurl racist abuse online, as they tend to thrive off a desire to thumb their noses at the established order. But the potential for abuse is enormous.

The problems of Muslim integration are much broader than the obstacles thrown up by French secularism. But the secularist mantra stifles public debate and prevents progress on the other dimensions, whether socioeconomic or cultural.

The French president’s brand of pragmatic centrist politics is really just class-interest-based politics.

That the Catholic Church should put Silicon Valley—or any other institution or culture—to shame when it comes to world-changing innovation is not some tantalizing yet naïve prospect. It should be the baseline expectation for any educated Catholic.

The replication crisis in experimental psychology has been well publicized. But there is a replication crisis going on in biomedicine at the moment too, and it is even worse.

There’s something profoundly conservative about tinkering around the edges rather than embarking on a grand reform agenda.

The urgency and vigor of those who despise the notion of “thoughts and prayers” would only be justified in their reaction if there were indeed a magic button we could push to fix the problem of gun violence tomorrow. And there isn’t.

The limitless American pragmatism, with its faith in the possibility of technical solutions for every problem, is a powerful spur to heroic medicine when combined with fear of death.

America’s two major health-care entitlements, Medicare and employer-sponsored health insurance, are gobbling up ever-bigger amounts of cash for less and less value.

We know the American health-care system is wasteful. But we don’t dare to look at how much money we’re throwing away — and we especially don’t dare to do anything about it.

Race has always been an important and divisive issue in American politics, but there’s no question things have become much more abrasive in recent years.

The uncomfortable truth is that under any conceivable system, the poor will always have worse health outcomes than the rich.