🎙️ Sentiment Without Judgment: Faith, Politics, and the American Conscience

In this episode, Halifax lawyer and moral theorist Shawn A. Scott examines Peggy Noonan’s reflection on Charlie Kirk’s televised memorial service and what it reveals about the rise of a self-consciously Christian Republican Party. The event—part revival, part rally—unites forgiveness and hatred in a single liturgy, exposing the fracture at the heart of America’s moral imagination.

Scott explores how Noonan’s lyrical tone—graceful, nostalgic, and humane—embodies a wider crisis: the triumph of sentiment over judgment in modern public faith. When civility replaces courage and beauty substitutes for coherence, truth dissolves into mood.

This episode asks whether Christianity in public life can recover its moral center—or whether it has become, in Noonan’s own words, “a big blur” where grace and grievance coexist without discernment.

Would you like me to craft a short (under 80 words) teaser version for podcast platforms as well?

☩ Tribunal of Conscience ☩
Truth. Love. Justice.

All episodes are part of the ongoing work of the Tribunal of Conscience — testing forms under the triune strain to reveal what holds and what collapses.

Follow and connect:

• 🌐 Tribunal Website
• ✉️ Subscribe for updates
• 🎧 Available on Apple, Spotify, and all major platforms

Let those who see the structure, name it without fear.

🎙️ Feminism’s Reckoning: From Liberation to Fragmentation

In this episode, Halifax lawyer Shawn A. Scott traces the moral and structural journey of feminism—from its roots in conscience and collective struggle to its later divisions under the pressures of liberalism, identity politics, and market culture.

Drawing on history, philosophy, and lived experience, Scott argues that feminism has been both the conscience and the casualty of modernity: a movement that revealed patriarchy’s injustices but became entangled in the same logic of individual autonomy it once resisted.

The discussion asks whether feminism can recover its unifying moral vision—one grounded not in ideology but in the triune coherence of truth, love, and justice.

This is a call to reimagine feminism not as faction but as form: a structure of conscience capable of enduring beyond collapse.

☩ Tribunal of Conscience ☩
Truth. Love. Justice.

All episodes are part of the ongoing work of the Tribunal of Conscience — testing forms under the triune strain to reveal what holds and what collapses.

Follow and connect:

• 🌐 Tribunal Website
• ✉️ Subscribe for updates
• 🎧 Available on Apple, Spotify, and all major platforms

Let those who see the structure, name it without fear.

🎙️ The Trojan Horse of Liberalism: When Law Fails the Vulnerable

In this episode, Halifax lawyer Shawn A. Scott examines how liberal legal ideals—neutrality, autonomy, privacy, and consent—collapse under the weight of domestic violence. What if the very doctrines designed to protect freedom actually entrench domination? Drawing from cases in Canada, the U.K., the U.S., and Australia, Scott argues that domestic violence is not an anomaly but the stress test of liberal modernity itself.

Through a blend of philosophy and courtroom realism, the episode exposes how “neutral” judgments can become complicit in coercion, how “consent” can sanctify captivity, and how “privacy” can conceal abuse. The conversation builds toward a structural horizon—one where truth, love, and justice re-anchor the law’s moral authority.

This is not merely a critique of legal doctrine—it’s a call for conscience within the architecture of justice.

Would you like a shorter, 75-word teaser suitable for podcast platforms as well (Apple, Spotify, etc.)?

☩ Tribunal of Conscience ☩
Truth. Love. Justice.

All episodes are part of the ongoing work of the Tribunal of Conscience — testing forms under the triune strain to reveal what holds and what collapses.

Follow and connect:

• 🌐 Tribunal Website
• ✉️ Subscribe for updates
• 🎧 Available on Apple, Spotify, and all major platforms

Let those who see the structure, name it without fear.

🎙️ Laughter Before the Fire: Irony and the End of Meaning

In this episode, Halifax lawyer and cultural theorist Shawn A. Scott takes listeners inside the moral collapse hiding beneath modern wit. Using Maureen Dowd’s 2025 column “We’re All Going to Die — Soonish!” as a case study, he explores how irony—once the conscience of civilization—has become its anesthesia.

Drawing on the legacy of David Foster Wallace, Scott traces the journey from prophetic irony to what he calls cruel irony: laughter that mocks the broken, erases the unseen, and resigns itself to despair. From Nietzsche’s disenchantment to postmodern detachment, he argues that today’s clever tone masks a deeper exhaustion—a culture that can only laugh at its own extinction.

The discussion then turns toward hope: the emerging ethic of tribunalism, a “grammar of tone” that tests every voice against truth, love, and justice. Can irony be redeemed? Can wit once again tremble before the real?

Join us for Laughter Before the Fire—a meditation on journalism, conscience, and the possibility of reverent laughter in an age that has forgotten how to believe.

☩ Tribunal of Conscience ☩
Truth. Love. Justice.

All episodes are part of the ongoing work of the Tribunal of Conscience — testing forms under the triune strain to reveal what holds and what collapses.

Follow and connect:

• 🌐 Tribunal Website
• ✉️ Subscribe for updates
• 🎧 Available on Apple, Spotify, and all major platforms

Let those who see the structure, name it without fear.