Posts by Samuel Gregg
May 12, 2021
In his Prayer Intentions for May 2021, Pope Francis is asking that Catholics pray for strict regulation of financial markets to protect the poor. But is strict government oversight what really protects the vulnerable from financial harm?
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February 22, 2021
The role of the state, in spheres ranging from public morality to the economy, is one of several axes around which debates about the conservative movement’s future are presently revolving.
In a 2020 article, I critiqued common-good constitutionalism for its misreading of how the natural law tradition treats the role of the state and law vis-à-vis morality.
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February 02, 2021
With any new presidential administration comes new policies. That’s part of the electoral calculus made by the American people every four years. Different presidents have different priorities. No one expects otherwise.
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October 06, 2020
One of the first things that will strike readers of Pope Francis’s new social encyclical
Fratelli Tutti is its sheer length. At about 43,000 words in English (including footnotes), that’s more than the Book of Genesis (32,046) and three times the size of the Gospel of John (15,635).
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June 18, 2020
In one of the most significant American political developments in some time, over the past five years many conservatives have embraced nationalism. This shift has not only reset the contours of debate, but it has directly influenced economic and foreign policy.
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June 10, 2020
Writing a biography of someone like General Augusto Pinochet is fraught with potential pitfalls. Does it become an exercise in whitewashing someone whose regime oversaw a brutal repression which included the “disappearing” of approximately 2,228 people?
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May 18, 2020
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the late John Paul II’s birth, it’s worth underscoring that one theme which permeated his pontificate from its beginning to the end was that of truth.
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May 12, 2020
If there is anything that we have learned over the past five years of political turmoil in Western countries, it is that large numbers of people across the political spectrum are increasingly dissatisfied with the workings of modern democracy.
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May 06, 2020
It’s no secret that China isn’t exactly flavor of the month throughout the world right now. Before the court of global opinion, the reputation of the Chinese regime is about as low as it can go.
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May 05, 2020
One reason why economists are viewed as modern-day Cassandras is that they tell us many things we don’t want to hear. Economics points relentlessly to the costs and benefits associated with particular decisions about alternative uses of scarce resources.
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