When David Munson was 19 years old, he went on a missions trip and was sure he had discovered his ultimate vocation. “I just knew I wanted to do ministry for the rest of my life,” he says. Soon thereafter, he moved to Mexico to teach English as a way to kickstart his life in foreign missions. Yet through a range of unexpected encounters, he found himself designing leather products and selling them out of his truck. The weirdest part:...

The homeless represent the most vulnerable portion of Americans living in poverty. The latest U.S. government report on homelessness shows that a culture ofsecularism and statism isdepriving Americans of church philanthropy, curbing the free market’s ability to provide,and leaving the most vulnerablereliant on the government – or the mercy of the streets. The Council of Economic Advisers detailed their conditions in itsreporton “The State of Homelessness in America,” released last week. It found that “rent controls” may have priced homeless...

Congregations in China’s officially recognized Protestant church have been forced to replace mandments to Moses with a quotation about the triumph of socialism, according to a religious liberty watchdog. The action literally substitutes socialism as an idol, in violation of the First Commandment.The Chinese government’s attempt to change the teachings of the60,000-church Three-Self Patriotic Movement unmasks how socialism crushesreligious liberty and reduces Christians to subservience – or elevates them to martyrdom. The magazineBitter Harvestreports: The Ten Commandments are the basis...

Did stingy UK mit “economic murder” by slashing NHS funding? A clip of a self-described Communist accusing the government of killing 120,000 people has gone viral, but the facts do not bear out her contention. Ash Sarkar, who scored a glowing profile inTeen Vogueafter calling herself “literally a Communist,” made ment on the BBC programQuestion Time: Austerity was not just a bloodless balancing of the books it was paid for with people’s lives, 120,000 people. The reason why I’m so...

What if someone told you “politicians sacrifice long-term economic performance for individual, political gain”? Many people would yawn (or sigh) and say this is obvious, or perhaps they would say it’s obvious with respect to the politicians in that otherpolitical party (the one that opposes their own). Nathan Jensen and Edmund Malesky, however, have not only made the claim quoted above, they’ve set out to prove it through hard data and careful argumentation in their book Incentives to Pander: How...

“If you are a socialist, and you are toying with the idea of writing a book – now is the time to do so,” writes Kristian Niemietz. “There seems to be an infinite demand for this message right now,” he states in a new book review posted atReligion & Liberty Transatlanticat the author’s request. Niemietz, the head of political economy at the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), reviews The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era...

If pandering is the politicians’pastime, then we owe a special debt of gratitude to those who resist this seemingly irresistible force. Today, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed that he refused to extenda £150 million government bailout to preventThomas Cook, the world’s oldest travel agency, from going bankrupt. Moreover, the prime minister explained his actions in both economic and moral terms. “It is perfectly true that a request was made to the government for a subvention of about £150 million​,”...

The debate between Sohrab Ahmari and David French has sparked a useful conversation about the means and ends of liberty. In that discussion, both men make valid criticisms and both sometimes fall short, but a recent column by Ahmari reveals perhaps the most glaring error in his perspective. Ahmari believes both economic interventionists (“progressive liberals”) and those who oppose state intervention (“conservative liberals”) share the same goal of maximizing freedom apart from state coercion. AtFirst Things, he writes: Progressiveliberals are...

On this date in 1796, near the end of his second term as president, George Washington published The Address of Gen. Washington to the People of America on His Declining the Presidency of the United States. Better known subsequently as his “farewell address,” it is his announcement of retirement from the presidency and from public life. He says, moreover, that he had wanted to retire after his first term but that considerations of duty had dissuaded him: “The strength of...

Since my book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization appeared in June this year, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the reception. The book seems to have touched upon topics that, while not at the forefront on daily political debate, are on many people’s minds and underlie some of the bigger questions that are to be found just beneath the surface of many contemporary discussions in Western countries. It turns out that subjects like the relationship between reason and...