Posts by Samuel Gregg
November 04, 2024
A decade or so ago, I boarded a Miami flight headed for Detroit and found myself sitting next to a short, elderly, Latin American gentleman. Throughout the flight, we exchanged the usual pleasantries that characterize such travel.
Continue Reading...
September 04, 2024
F.A. Hayek’s
The Road to Serfdom (1944) is often portrayed as a mid-20th-century economist’s restatement of a 19th-century case for unreconstructed laissez-faire economics. Anyone who has read the text, however, knows that this is a serious misrepresentation of Hayek’s most famous book.
Continue Reading...
October 05, 2023
If there is anything we have learned about Pope Francis’ commentaries on issues ranging from economics to the environment, it is that they invariably add up to a by-now predictable mixture.
Continue Reading...
September 19, 2023
What is progress? How and where does it occur? Such questions are not easy to answer. Debates about the nature of progress have given rise to entire theories of historical development.
Continue Reading...
June 29, 2023
If there is anything that makes people nervous about capitalism, it is surely the prospect of instability. Whether it is the boom-bust cycle or severe financial crises, the up-and-downs that seem to be part-and-parcel of life in market economies make us nervous.
Continue Reading...
November 15, 2022
As far as centuries go, the 20th was remarkable for many things, not least among which were wars fought on a scale unprecedented for their destructiveness, as well as convulsive debates about economics and economic policy.
Continue Reading...
September 07, 2022
It’s no secret that the modern American conservative movement is divided today. Issues like the role of government, the place of the nation-state, and the extent to which free markets should prevail in economic life have become major points of fracture across the right that seem unlikely to be resolved soon.
Continue Reading...
August 19, 2022
Any discussion of the nature and ends of liberty and justice inevitably touches upon the role of government and law in society. A good place to begin reflecting upon natural law’s approach to these questions is Aquinas’ understanding of law.
Continue Reading...
August 02, 2022
In recent weeks, the
New York Times has been running opinion pieces in which various columnists expound on a topic about which they have changed their views. On July 21 it was David Brooks’ turn to lay out his mea culpa.
Continue Reading...
April 22, 2022
Love him or hate him, it’s almost impossible to ignore the philosopher Leo Strauss (1899–1973). Few individuals have drawn out so thoroughly some of the implications of philosophy for a range of political positions while simultaneously exploring perennial issues such as the meaning of the Enlightenment and its relationship to classical and religious thought.
Continue Reading...