Posts by Samuel Gregg
April 22, 2020
On December 26, 1991, the USSR’s Supreme Soviet passed its final piece of legislation. Declaration Number 142-Н formally stated that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a sovereign entity.
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April 20, 2020
Crises are not only opportunities which should, to paraphrase Rahm Emmanuel, never be allowed go to waste. They also serve as clarifying moments. Unexpected events can shatter even the strongest consensus on a given topic.
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April 07, 2020
The relationship between law, morality, and liberty is one of those topics that invariably generates fierce debate. And it usually plays out in very predictable ways.
On the one hand, there are some whose first instinct is to lurch for a comprehensive legal response to any number of moral evils to which legal coercion may not be the most optimal or even just response: “
There ought to be a law against that!”
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March 25, 2020
With so many people around the world in moderate or full quarantines and lockdowns, many of them are turning to books to pass the time, ease their fears, or simply take advantage of an unexpected and involuntary opportunity to recharge their intellectual batteries.
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March 16, 2020
This article first appeared on March 2, 2020, in Public Discourse, the journal of the Witherspoon Institute, and was republished with permission.
Since 2016, much of the American Right has been preoccupied with the liberalism wars.
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March 12, 2020
With coronavirus understandably being the focus of most people’s thoughts these days, it’s not surprising that other important events might escape our attention. Consider, for example, the fact that tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on March 10 this week in their nation’s capital, Caracas, as well as other cities to demand an end to the Chavista dictatorship of President Nicolás Maduro which has driven the country into an economic black hole from which it shows no signs of emerging.
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March 12, 2020
This article first appeared on February 24, 2020, in Law & Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund, Inc., and was republished with permission.
In many peoples’ minds, economics and economists remain locked in a world of homo economicus—the ultimate pleasure-calculator who seeks only to maximize personal satisfaction from the consumption of goods and services and whose occasional displays of seemingly altruistic behavior really only function as a means of self-satisfaction.
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March 03, 2020
It’s almost two months since the death of perhaps the twentieth century’s most important conservative philosopher, Sir Roger Scruton, but discussion of the significance of his work and life continues to occupy a great deal of space in journals, opinion pieces and on the airwaves.
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February 20, 2020
February 2020 marks the third anniversary of the death of the American Catholic intellectual and the 1994 winner of the Templeton Prize in Religion, Michael Novak. Perhaps most famous for his 1982 book, “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism,” Novak’s ideas were immensely influential for several decades in American public life, numerous faith communities and the world of political economy.
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February 14, 2020
It’s hardly news to say that Argentina is in deep economic trouble. With only a few exceptions, that has been a given for decades. But recent developments underscore just how much it is the responsibility of Argentine populist politicians and, to be blunt, those who persist in voting for them.
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