Year: 2012

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...
September 10, 2012

Commercializing Chaplaincy

I thought this piece in BusinessWeek last month from Mark Oppenheimer was very well done, “The Rise of the Corporate Chaplain.” I think it profiles an important and under-appreciated phenomenon in the American commercial sphere. Continue Reading...
September 10, 2012

Fr. Sirico on 9/11 and the End of Freedom

In his latest column at Forbes, Fr. Robert Sirico discusses his memories of 9/11 and the end of freedom: One might also be tempted to imagine that the answer to bin Laden’s religious mania is a morally neutral public square. Continue Reading...
September 10, 2012

How Ayn Rand’s Philosophy Supports the Welfare State

The paradox of Ayn Rand’s philosophy, James Joseph explains, is that her defense of individual freedom provides a “self-defeating apologia for the American welfare state.” Here we have Ms Rand’s answer to the murder-fueled regimes of mid-century communism: The Individual is the sole scale of value, individual freedom is necessary to the individual survival, she says, and my survival is the sole end of my existence. Continue Reading...
September 07, 2012

The Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty

To truly understand what a conservative believes, you must know what it is they want to conserve. Like many other Christians who identify as conservatives, my own answer to that question would be the same as that of Russell Kirk: The institution most essential to conserve is the family. Continue Reading...
September 07, 2012

ResearchLinks – 09.07.12

Book Note: “Walzer, ‘In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible'” Michael Walzer, In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. In this eagerly awaited book, political theorist Michael Walzer reports his findings after decades of thinking about the politics of the Hebrew Bible. Continue Reading...