Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Public Policy

May 23, 2012

Acton Commentary: Contagious Community

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Contagious Community,” I look at the positive as well as the negative aspects of coordination and cooperation between human beings on a global scale. The film Contagion provided the occasion for these reflections, and I argue that while the film is clear about the dangers of globalized human relationships, it also teaches a more subtle lesson. Continue Reading...
May 23, 2012

Valuing Innovation, Not Smallness

Back in February I argued that since bias is inherent in institutions we should encourage the government to be biased toward entrepreneurship and away from corporatism. The result of such a bias would be to favor newer—and presumably smaller—businesses over more established—and presumably larger—ones, thereby reducing the levels of regulatory capture and crony capitalism (at least in theory). Continue Reading...
May 22, 2012

What Happens When ‘Free’ is Unaffordable?

As I noted yesterday, I’m in Montreal for the next couple of weeks, and today I had the chance to see some of the student protests firsthand. These protests have been going on now for over three months, and have to do with the raising of tuition for college in Quebec. Continue Reading...
May 22, 2012

Small Scale Subsidiarity

Nowhere in his article for The Atlantic does Joshua Foust use the “s” word.  But it’s obvious from the examples he mentions that the key to providing aid to Pakistan is applying the principle of subsidiarity: . Continue Reading...
May 16, 2012

Free Market Environmentalism for Religious Leaders

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcuZYn6BLyI Our friends at the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) in Bozeman, Mont., have put together another strong slate of summer programs for clergy, seminary professors and other religious leaders with the aim of deepening their understanding of environmental policy. Continue Reading...
May 10, 2012

Charity Begins at Home

In a paper at the symposium I noted in yesterday’s post, Richard Helmholtz described the application of natural law in a particular case in which the judges observed that “charity begins at home,” since “it is a natural impulse to do good to one’s own family.” Continue Reading...
May 09, 2012

The Impious Legacy of US Education

“Even the conventional everyday morality,” writes Vladimir Solovyov, demands that a man should hand down to his children not only the goods he has acquired, but also the capacity to work for the further maintenance of their lives. Continue Reading...
May 09, 2012

Natural Law and Winter’s Bone

I was privileged to participate this week in a conference at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, hosted by the Division for Roman Law and Legal History, “Law and Religion: The Legal Teachings of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.” Continue Reading...