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March 27, 2012

The Social Muddle

Over on The American Spectator website, Acton research fellow Jonathan Witt explains that contrary to the misunderstanding of many on the political and religious left, business, justice, and the Gospel are already social: Continue Reading...
March 27, 2012

Does the Vatican think water should be ‘free’?

Not surprisingly, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP)’s latest document on water has garnered scant media attention. Why, after all, would journalists, already notorious for their professional Attention Deficit Disorder and dislike of abstract disputation, report on something named “Water: An Essential Element of Life,” especially when it is nothing more than an update of a document originally released in 2003, and then updated in 2006 and 2009, with the exact same titles? Continue Reading...
March 26, 2012

Can Fair Trade End Poverty?

Which does a better job helping the impoverished people around the globe—free trade or fair trade? The American Enterprise Institute recently held a debate on that topic at John Brown University entitled “Free Trade vs. Continue Reading...
March 26, 2012

HHS Mandate Fits Bigger Pattern

Both the original and compromise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren. Continue Reading...
March 23, 2012

Europe: A Turtle on its Back?

Would dissolving the European common currency, as proposed by the French free-market economist and entrepreneur Charles Gave in his book Libéral mais non coupable (“Liberal But Not Guilty”) free the Old Continent to stand upright on its financial feet again?  Continue Reading...