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December 03, 2015

Why Emergency Food Assistance Can Prolong War and Conflict

There are ten vital foundational lessons that should be taught in any introductory course on economics, says Don Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University. The first three lessons on his list are, (1) [T]he world is full of both desirable and undesirable unintended consequences – consequences that are largely invisible but that even a course in ‘mere’ principles of economics gives us great vision that enables us to “see,” (2) intentions are not results; (3) our world is unavoidably one of trade-offs and not “solutions,” … While these lessons can be easily understood in theory, applying them to the real world can often be surprisingly difficult. Continue Reading...
December 03, 2015

Should Religious Liberty Be Considered the ‘First Freedom’?

Ask most Americans why religious liberty is considered the “first freedom” and they’ll likely say it’s because it comes first in the Bill of Rights. While technically true (it does comes first) that wasn’t the intention of the original framers of the Constitution The original Bill of Rights included two other amendments that were listed ahead of what we now consider the “First Amendment” but that failed to be ratified. Continue Reading...
December 03, 2015

Frankenfish? No, It’s Just a Salmon

My many mentors over the course of my lifetime thus far have advised me, to a person, to be more optimistic and less cynical. The glass, they told me, always should be perceived as half-full regardless the circumstances. Continue Reading...
December 02, 2015

The Perversion of the Establishment Clause

“Nothing in the Constitution has been so judicially perverted from its original intent as the establishment clause,” says Zack Pruitt in the first entry of this week’s Acton Commentary. “The same clause went from protecting the people from a tyrannical state-run church to punishing those who dare to voluntarily pray on government property.” Continue Reading...