Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

December 02, 2005

A La Carte

As much as I would love to have the choice to pick what channels I pay for and receive over cable individually, I think Arnold Kling is right: The FCC shouldn’t force cable companies to offer that option. Continue Reading...
December 01, 2005

Who receives farm subsidies?

There’s a persistent myth in Europe and America that farms subsidies are needed to protect the “family farm” and all the virtues that accompany rural life. Religious leaders and Catholic Bishops conferences seem to be especially prone to this argument. Continue Reading...
December 01, 2005

Farm subsidies under fire

The Financial Times reports that generous farm subsidies in the United States and Western Europe are increasingly beleaguered. If the US and Europe don’t voluntarily eliminate the unfair advantage their agriculture producers enjoy in the global market, then developing nations are likely to take legal action through the WTO. Continue Reading...
December 01, 2005

The daily dose

A section compiled by Matt Donnelly at Science & Theology News calls the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance’s recent formation a continuation of “the recent and laudable trend of faith-based organizations making a serious attempt to grapple with the religious basis for environmental stewardship.” Continue Reading...
November 30, 2005

Freedom to give

The Salvation Army Bell Ringers are now audibly calling us to seasonal charitable giving. But the pleas from multiple organizations for our benevolence—from both unprecedented terrorist attacks and natural disasters to the ever-present needs of our less fortunate neighbors—have been virtually ongoing since 9/11. Continue Reading...
November 30, 2005

God and man in the environmental debate

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Jay Richards looks at the ingrained tendency of many environmentalists to view man’s place in nature as fundamentally destructive. For people of faith, this is simply bad theology. Continue Reading...
November 30, 2005

‘Addio, Dolce Vita’

That’s the title of this week’s survey of Italy in The Economist. The news for Italy is quite depressing. Its economic growth is the slowest in Europe, behind even France and Germany, its productivity is down while its wages are up, and a massive demographic crisis looms. Continue Reading...
November 30, 2005

Instant classics

This made me think of this. If the British phone company were really smart, they’d just negotiate a price to use the Book-A-Minute Classics. The versions are a bit different, though. Continue Reading...
November 30, 2005

The digital divide in the developing world

A key barrier to economic growth in the developing world is reliable access to the global information network: the Internet. A UN-sponsored study, “Information Economy Report 2005” by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (PDF) shows that one of the features of the digital divide between the developing and the developed world has to do with the cost of high-bandwidth Internet access. Continue Reading...
November 30, 2005

Politics 101

The first lesson of Politics 101: When in trouble, look to your base. That’s what House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert is apparently doing, in his recent push to make sure the lighted tree put up in December on the U.S. Continue Reading...