J. Nick Pitts serves as the director of cultural engagement at the Denison Forum on Truth and Culture.

He came to the Denison Forum in 2014 after a fateful conversation with its founder, Dr. Jim Denison. Pitts, a Ph.D. candidate at Dallas Baptist University (DBU), had spent the summer studying at Oxford with other students and faculty including Denison, a visiting professor.

He contributes to the Forum in the areas of geopolitics and popular culture, as well as serving as the editor of the Daily Briefing. He continues work on his doctorate and serves as an adjunct professor at DBU, teaching a master’s level course in the philosophy of leadership.

His Ph.D. research centers upon John F. Kennedy’s engagement of the religious community in the 1960 presidential campaign. He presented a paper on the topic at Calvin College’s 2015 symposium on religion and public life.

He is an editor at large for The Liberty Project, an online magazine, and his op-eds have been published by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Religion News Service and Townhall.com.

He received a bachelor’s degree in 2007 from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and a master’s degree in 2009 from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Mr. Dys graduated from Taylor University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, degree in Communication Studies while concentrating his minor study in U.S. History and Philosophy. During his undergraduate career, Dys also studied at the American Studies Program in Washington, D.C. where he interned with the late David Orgon Coolidge as part of the Marriage Law Project of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Kristan was hired in 2006 to lead Students for Life of America (SFLA). Since launching SFLA’s full-time operation, Kristan has helped more than triple the number of campus pro-life groups in the United States, from 181 to almost 800 in 49 states, and grow the SFLA National Conference from 450 in 2007 to 2,000 in 2012, making the event the largest pro-life conference in the nation. In 2013, she authored SFLA’s first book Courageous: Students Abolishing Abortion in this Lifetime.

As President, Kristan directs the mission and strategy of Students for Life of America. In addition, Kristan serves as the organization’s official spokeswoman and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, EWTN, Family Talk with Dr. James Dobson and the Christian Broadcasting Network. She is frequent blogger for LifeNews.com and Townhall.com and has also been quoted in numerous national and regional newspapers such as the Washington Times, Washington Post, FoxNews.com. A dynamic speaker, Kristan travels the country talking to students and adults alike on a wide range of topics including Planned Parenthood, Real Feminism, Real Social Justice, Pro-Life Activism and Leadership.

Kristan resides in the St. Paul, MN area with her husband, Jonathan, and three sons, Gunner, Bear, and Maverick and daughter, Gracie.

To protect the feelings of some residents, a court unconstitutionally strips power from Congress and the president. The unfolding series of judicial decisions blocking the Trump administration’s past and present temporary travel bans — especially the ruling handed down last night in Hawaii — if upheld by courts of appeal or the Supreme Court, would risk fatally undermining our nation’s constitutional national-security structure and our national sovereignty, and could extend and magnify our military conflicts abroad. To understand why and how, you have to know the meaning of one word: “standing.” To simplify a rather complex legal doctrine: Rules on “standing” mean that not just anybody can waltz into federal court and challenge government actions. To maintain an action, you must demonstrate that you have suffered a violation of a recognized right. To use the lingo of the courts, you must show that your injuries are “concrete and particularized.”

The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.

Over the past decade, pollsters charted something remarkable: Americans—long known for their piety—were fleeing organized religion in increasing numbers. The vast majority still believed in God. But the share that rejected any religious affiliation was growing fast, rising from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in 2014. Among Millennials, the figure was 35 percent.

Some observers predicted that this new secularism would ease cultural conflict, as the country settled into a near-consensus on issues such as gay marriage. After Barack Obama took office, a Center for American Progress report declared that “demographic change,” led by secular, tolerant young people, was “undermining the culture wars.” In 2015, the conservative writer David Brooks, noting Americans’ growing detachment from religious institutions, urged social conservatives to “put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations.”

The dream of a therapeutic utopia without punishment for wrongdoing fails in practice. Deterrence is the strategy of persuading someone in advance not to do something, often by raising the likelihood of punishment. But in the 21st century, we apparently think deterrence is Neanderthal and appeals to the worst aspects of our natures. The alternative view insists that innately nice people respond better to discussion and outreach.

History is largely the story of the tensions between, and the combination of, these two very different views of human nature — one tragic and one therapeutic. The recent presidential election results favor a more pessimistic view of humans: that without enforceable rules, humans are likely to run amok — quite in contrast to the prior therapeutic mindset of the Obama administration.

Women are in real danger of being silenced and harmed by the madness now enveloping us.

Don’t believe the politicians and social justice warriors. It seems bullying is only bad if it’s done by the wrong people toward the wrong people.

Women are in real danger of being silenced and harmed, not by the “patriarchy” or by old-school sexism and discrimination, but by the madness now enveloping us. Fear of the bullies has left many women unwilling to call the madness what it is.

Women — and our young daughters — are the first mandatory sacrificial offering to the greedy god of “gender identity” and “transgenderism.”
Telling Daughters to Shut Up About Their Discomfort

Female-only public spaces are vanishing as this madness takes over every aspect of our lives. Common sense and decency both demand that women have showering, dressing, and bathroom facilities that are private and separate from men. But that obvious decency is too much to ask any longer. Women are now expected to shut up and endure the violation when a man walks into the restroom, locker room, or dressing room. Even young girls are told they cannot object to seeing the naked male form or they will be branded as intolerant bigots.

The pressure to accept without the slightest complaint this new code that deprives women of privacy and safety, to conform or else, is intimidating and difficult to resist. One self-described progressive mother bravely recounts her experience at Disneyland when she saw a man walk into a crowded women’s restroom: