Month: September 2012

September 13, 2012

Retailer Hobby Lobby Sues Over HHS Mandate

Yesterday, privately-owned Hobby Lobby, a popular craft store chain, filed suit opposing the HHS mandate which forces employers to provide “preventive care” measures such as birth-control and “morning after” pills. “By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” said David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder. Continue Reading...
September 12, 2012

Nuns vs. Managers in the Proxy Wars

For many nuns in the U.S. April is a busy month. Not only do they have the liturgical season of Easter but they have the proxy season of corporate governance. The proxy season is the time when many companies hold their annual shareholder meetings. Continue Reading...
September 12, 2012

Leaves and Fruit: The Spiritual Value of Manual Labor

In his Acton Commentary today, Jordan Ballor writes, All work has a spiritual dimension because the human person who works in whatever capacity does so as an image-bearer of God. “While the classic Greek mind tended to scorn work with the hands,” write Berghoef and DeKoster, “the Bible suggests that something about it structures the soul.” Continue Reading...
September 12, 2012

Of Ministers and Muck Farmers

In today’s Acton Commentary, “Mike Rowe and Manual Labor,” I examine the real contribution from a star of the small screen to today’s political conversation. Mike Rowe, featured on shows like The Deadliest Catch and Dirty Jobs, has written letters to both President Obama and Mitt Romney focusing attention on the skills gap and our nation’s dysfunctional attitudes towards work, particularly hard labor, like skilled trades and services. Continue Reading...
September 11, 2012

Review: A Free People’s Suicide

Below is my review of A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future by Os Guinness. A final version of this book review will appear in the Fall 2012 Journal of Markets & Morality (15.2). Continue Reading...
September 11, 2012

Rand or Röpke?

On his personal blog, author and publishing industry executive Joel J. Miller asks, “What if we dumped Rand for Röpke?” Good question. Miller says that it’s simply unnecessary for Christians to invoke Rand in their defense of the free market. Continue Reading...
September 11, 2012

Do We Belong to the Government or Does that Government Belong to Us?

During the recent Democratic National Convention, the party played a video which stated, “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” Daniel Kelly explains what’s wrong with such claims: That one compact statement raises a question I thought we had settled quite some time ago: Are we a people who has a government, or a government that has a people? Continue Reading...
September 11, 2012

Appreciating the Role of Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity, the idea that those closest to a problem should be the ones to solve it, plays a particular role in development. However, it can be an idea that is a bit “slippery”: who does what and when? Continue Reading...
September 10, 2012

Leading Up

Most of the time we spend on this planet we are looking down. Down at our desks . . . down at our feet . . . down at the dishes. Continue Reading...