“But how will you walk to the grocery store? I don’t even see one near you!” This was the first comment my brother-in-law made when we sent him the Google Maps view of our new house two years ago. We were proud first-time homeowners, but his question reflected one of the largest differences in the culture between his town and ours.

“Each year when I arrive at [my in-laws’] tidy, modest home (which they built themselves in the 1990’s), I feel a bit like Alice the giant in Wonderland. The rooms, plates, cups, washing machine–everything is smaller than I am used to. Water here must be filtered or bought from the store, and so it is treated as precious, whether you’re drinking it or using it to wash clothes.

About a decade ago I used to volunteer with a pro-life religious order many of you may be familiar with—the Sisters of Life—in their Handmaids program. The concept was simple: while the Sisters provided many of the material resources necessary to help women through a crisis pregnancy, the Handmaids volunteers “walked with” the women through texts, phone calls, and meetings for coffee.

Peter’s acceptance speech, delivered at the 2023 Solidarity Convention in Plano, TX.

Princeton law professor, Robert George, a man of great intellect and action, has introduced a counter effort to mitigate the effects and ultimately reverse the course of these rapidly advancing value drifts.