Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

March 01, 2006

Ancient wisdom for an old problem

Washington lawmakers are falling all over themselves to pass legislation aimed at curbing corruption in high places. But, as Kevin Schmiesing points out, the most effective solution to the problem has been known for hundreds of years: limited government and moral restraint. Continue Reading...
February 28, 2006

Beginning “The End of Poverty”

Although I am a year behind here, I have just started reading Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, paperback just released by Penguin (with a foreword by Bono!). Continue Reading...
February 28, 2006

The Cartwrights and cowboy compassion

I was watching my favorite rerun on TV Land the other day, Bonanza. If you don’t know Bonanza, you should. It’s perhaps the classic TV western, and I was watching episode #68 from Season Three, “Springtime.” Continue Reading...
February 27, 2006

Making media history

Google announced plans today to partner with the National Archives to digitize the institution’s media holdings, specifically through a pilot project to “digitize their video content and offer it to everyone in the world for free.” Continue Reading...
February 24, 2006

The world is not enough

Not satisfied simply with privately-funded space flights, the X Prize Foundation is currently drafting rules for a lunar lander challenge. The foundation is looking for comments from the public on the current draft, and here are some of the details according to SPACE.com: Continue Reading...
February 23, 2006

The ‘ecumenical’ alternative

If you’re looking for more insight on, or perhaps simple confirmation of, the economic agenda of the ‘ecumenical’ movement (the World Council of Churches [WCC] the World Alliance of Reformed Churches [WARC], et al.), Continue Reading...
February 22, 2006

Does black history have a future?

As America celebrates Black History Month, Anthony Bradley looks at the forces that threaten the very foundation of black society in this country. “Two aspects of pre-civil rights-era black history — strong men and strong families — will have to be recovered if we wish to have any black history in the future,” Bradley warns. Continue Reading...
February 22, 2006

Hollywood and capitalism

Clive Cook has a terrific article in the March 2006 Atlantic Monthly that is worth reading in its entirety. But here’s my favorite paragraph: What is most striking, so far as the movies’ treatment of capitalism goes, is not the hostility of films whose main purpose is actually to indict corporate wickedness (Wall Street, Erin Brockovich, A Civil Action, The Insider, The Constant Gardener, and so forth). Continue Reading...
February 21, 2006

Good intentions and unsound economics

This Sunday I went to Mass at a parish I’d never attended before. I was quite pleasantly surprised—the music wasn’t bad, the rubrics were followed, the homily focused on the gospel, they chanted the Agnus Dei, and prayed the prayer to St. Continue Reading...