In a report on the Republican roundtable debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, National Review Online’s Kathryn Lopez writes about the ongoing breakdown of the family and its role in economic life. She talks to Acton’s Samuel Gregg about the clashing views that often exist in the conservative world on economic questions.
“There are obvious tensions between those free marketers who have problems with objective morality and those social conservatives who have a bad habit of blaming the market economy for many of society’s problems,” says Samuel Gregg, research director at the Acton Institute. “But it seems to me that free societies characterized by a robust market economy, strong civil associations, and a limited state need (a) market institutions underpinned by a commitment to liberty and property rights and (b) social institutions that are characterized by unapologetically nonliberal conceptions of family and associational life. . . . Large, expansionist states tend to undermine not just the market but also civil society and strong families.”
Read “Love on the Campaign Trail” on National Review Online.
