Latest Posts

The Debt-ridden American Dream

Fresh out of college and full of ideals, young Americans are finding that, in this economy, the American Dream comes at a steep cost. Just ask Michelle Holshue: At 30 years old, Holshue exemplifies a key tenet of the American dream: exceeding one’s parents’ education and income. Continue Reading...

The True Social Contract

Uncontrolled public debt threatens to rupture society, says Niall Ferguson, as the older generation thrives at the expense of the young. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke wrote that the real social contract is not Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s contract between the sovereign and the people or “general will”, but the “partnership” between the generations. Continue Reading...

Bastiat’s Vision

This Saturday, June 30, is the 211th birthday of Frédéric Bastiat, one of the greatest political philosophers of the modern era. Considered among the founding fathers of classical liberalism, Bastiat is known for his simple and direct explanations of political and economic realities, his arguments against oppressive economic regulations and his clear and concise vision of a government of limited, enumerated powers, operating under the rule of law and unencumbered by favoritism or distributionist policies. Continue Reading...

Obamacare ruling ‘a turn to tyranny’

On the Observer blog (and picked up on Catholic Online), Antiochian Orthodox priest Fr. Hans Jacobse predicts that the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling will, “by the middle of the next generation” lead those who worked for this program — or ignored the threat — to be “cursed” by their own children. Continue Reading...

Growing Detroit

Some time back I argued that urban farming and the entrepreneurial spirit in Detroit was something that should be embraced rather than dismissed. Detroit mayor Dave Bing has given verbal support for urban and community farms in the past, but in many cases some regulatory hurdles remained and he was somewhat skeptical at times about the importance of large scale urban agriculture projects. Continue Reading...