Notable Speeches

On Jan. 23, 2020, dozens of world leaders gathered in Jerusalem to commemorate the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews during World War II.  The Forum coincided with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.  The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, claimed an estimated six million lives,  This edition of Notable Speeches features the World Holo...

British-born philosopher Roger Scruton , once hailed as “the most influential conservative thinker since Edmund Burke,” died Jan. 12, 2020, at the age of 75. His books include The Meaning of Conservatism (1980, 2001), An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture ( 1998, 2005), and The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat (2002). Mr. Scruton delivered this address at a lectu...

Hadley Arkes, the founder of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding, was the architect of the Born-Alive Infants’ Protection Act, signed into law in 2002.  A follow-up bill, known as the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, passed the House in 2018 but was not taken up in the Senate during that session of Congress. Mr. Arkes is a professor emeritus at...

Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb passed away Dec. 30, 2019, at age 97.  In an editorial tribute, The Wall Street Journal wrote that she was "known for rigorous scholarship, brilliant essays, and her forceful defense of morality in democratic politics,"  Her books include Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians (Knopf, 1991) and The De-Moralization of Society: Fr...

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is the author of Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press, 2012) and The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (Simon & Schuster, 2020). He presented this address in September 2019 as part of the Archdiocese of Denver's Saint John Paul II Lecture Series, "a quarterly event which features intellectually stimulati...

Patrick Trueman led the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, from 1988 to 1993. Today, he serves as president and CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an organization that seeks to "expos[e] the links between all forms of sexual exploitation — such as child sexual abuse, prostitution, sex trafficking and the public health crisis...

In this Oval Office address from Dec. 23, 1981, President Reagan speaks about  the "sense of wonder" that is renewed when "recalling the story of the first Christmas in Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago." He also decries the Polish government's recent martial-law crackdown on political opponents, including leaders of the trade union Solidarity. He warns Polish leaders and "their totalit...

In this episode, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) describes the "breakdown of community" in the USA and the corresponding "rise of a new oligarchy of wealth and education." He argues that the nation's cultural moment requires "a new politics of family and neighborhood...of love and belonging...[and] of home." Sen. Hawley, the U.S. Senate's youngest member, presented this speech on Nov. 19, 2019, at the 6t...

This speech by U.S. Attorney General William Barr was presented Oct. 11, 2019, at the University of Notre Dame Law School in Indiana. In his remarks, Mr. Barr criticized "militant secularists” who are "not content to leave religious people alone to practice their faith." Instead, "they seem to take delight in compelling people to violate their conscience,” he said. The full text of the attorn...

On Nov. 5, 2019, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) delivered his address, “Catholic Social Doctrine and the Dignity of Work” to students at the Busch School of Business in Washington, D.C., part of the Catholic University of America.   The text of his remarks (as prepared for delivery) is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20231210062752/https://www.rubio.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/_cache/fi...

A short (45 seconds!) introduction to the forthcoming Notable Speeches podcast. Subscribe via your favorite podcast app — search "Notable Speeches." Comments or suggestions? Email feedback@notablespeeches.com