Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis. During a 2012 talk at the University of Notre Dame, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who died last month, spoke evocatively of “the needs of the hungry and the homeless; the needs of single mothers; the needs of migrant farmworkers; the needs of refugees and illegal immigrants; the needs for good high schools for deprived children; the needs of the physically and the mentally ill; the needs of those in prison and of ex-prisoners,” and especially, “the needs of children: children who are hungry or homeless; children of prisoners; children whose schools fail them; children whose parents don’t have the means of caring for them.”
