Religion & Liberty Online Archives

International Affairs

October 24, 2017

Government regulations in a fallen world

  The number of federal regulations in the United States broke an all-time record last year. A total of 97,110 pages were added to the Federal Register in 2016. The Competitive Enterprise Institute calculates the compliance costs and economic impacts of federal regulations at $1.89 trillion. Continue Reading...
October 23, 2017

Do natural disasters justify big government?

When disasters strike – as they have repeatedly across the transatlantic sphere this season – government exercises its most essential function: saving lives. Do these heroic actions validate the ongoing intervention of the federal government into local affairs? Continue Reading...
October 20, 2017

Christian influence over the common law, remembered at last

Christianity planted the seed that germinated into Western thought for two millennia. Yet the contributions of the faith, and its practitioners, remain unsung, underappreciated, and unheralded in an ever-secularizing west – a fact remedied in part by the book Great Christian Jurists in English History, edited by Hill and Helmholz. Continue Reading...
October 13, 2017

Sin taxes: The ‘nudge’ that benefits terrorism

Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize for describe how even small economic incentives can affect behavior. One of those nudges, high “sin taxes,” has helped finance terrorism and organized crime. Sin taxes played some role in his winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences this week. Continue Reading...
October 11, 2017

The ‘nudge’ that separated families

Richard Thaler, the co-author of Nudge, has won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to behavioral economics. While he decides how best to spend his $1.1 million in prize money, less prosperous families are paying the price for government policies advancing economic paternalism. Continue Reading...
October 09, 2017

How Christopher Columbus helped bring the School of Salamanca to the Americas

Every Columbus Day gives rise to endless debates and recriminations over the impact of Christopher Columbus’ expedition upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas. No honest observer can dismiss the injustices perpetrated after Columbus’ landing (nor before it), but one benefit of his voyage has been forgotten: It inadvertently exposed the Americas to the School of Salamanca. Continue Reading...