On AEI’s Values & Capitalism blog, RJ Moeller kicks off a new series that will “highlight the work and ideas of people advocating for free enterprise in especially compelling and interesting ways” with a review of Rev. Sirico’s Defending the Free Market:
As you continue through the richly insightful pages of “Defending The Free Market,” Rev. Sirico goes to great lengths to drive home an incredibly important point: Freedom is not normal. The United States is not just an aberration. It is the aberration of human history. No civilization has flourished like we have in our 235 short years, and Rev. Sirico implores the reader not to miss the very important fact that we did this because of (not in spite of) our radically different views on concepts like liberty, equality, and charity.
We have prized certain values over others. We have valued things that other countries and cultures have scoffed at since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. And attached to all of the other freedoms we hold so dear—the one that binds and undergirds all others—is economic freedom. The right to freely seek one’s own vocation. The right to both bear risk and reap reward. The right (and responsibility) to provide for one’s own family. The Judeo-Christian duty to use one’s own property and possessions to personally help the least among us.
