In my Winter 2007 article on economic globalization for AGAIN Magazine, I quoted economist Wilhelm Roepke. (AGAIN is published by Conciliar Media Ministries, a department of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of North America). Roepke: Economically ignorant moralism is as objectionable as morally callous economism. Ethics and economics are two equally difficult subjects, and while the former needs discerning and expert reason, the latter cannot do without humane values. In light of all that has happened with the U.S. economic...

In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” Jordan Ballor kindly asked me to offer a few words in response to this question, as I made it an area of expertise during the previous Administration. I’ve been working up to writing something more formal, but I’ll begin by thinking aloud here, as well as at my my home blog. Without further ado, here’s what I posted over there: By now, you’ve probably heard about the...

Ignore those racial disparity studies that point to the “resegregation” of America’s educational system. They advance the lie that minorities cannot survive without whites. “What is best for e black and Latino students is what is best for all students: stable and supportive families, parental options, and high achieving schools with stellar teachers,” Bradley writes. Read mentary at the Acton website, and then discuss it here. ...

In a Forbes blog post titled “Failure of Morality, Not Capitalism,” Rich Kaarlgard counters the critics of supply-side capitalism by pointing to an absence of morality. Kaarlgard declares: Many people do blame capitalism for bringing us to this low moment in the economy. Do they have a point? They do if capitalism, as they define it, is devoid of any underlying morality. True enough, it is hard to see any underlying morality when one surveys the present carnage caused by...

In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” Perhaps taking a cue from this week’s PBR question (or perhaps not), the On Faith roster of bloggers have been asked to weigh in on the following question this week: “Should the Obama Administration let faith-based programs that receive government grants discriminate against those they hire or serve?” Notable responses include those from Chuck Colson, Al Mohler, and Susan Brooks Thistlewaite, the latter of whom has these...

It’s long been my contention that the mythology surrounding the New Deal in large swaths of the popular imagination plays an ongoing, important, and harmful role in politics and policy debate. For that reason, I e periodic attempts to debunk the myth. Jonah Goldberg offers a perceptive and enlightening perspective on New Deal historiography and its current uses and abuses. Unlike Daniel Gross (cited by Goldberg), I don’t care whether the analyst is an historian, economist, policy wonk, or journalist,...

I’ve been reading America’s Secular Challenge by NYU professor and president of the Hudson Institute Herb London. The book is essentially an extended essay about how elite, left-wing secularism undercuts America’s traditional strengths of patriotism and religious faith during a time when the nation can ill afford it. The assault on public religion and love of es in a period when America faces enemies who have no such crisis of identity and lack the degree of doubt that leaves us...

“Focusing on education is not a distraction from the pressing business of economic recovery,” Kevin Schmiesing writes. “It is vital to ensuring it.” This focus should advance school choice and a reduction of administrative red tape. Read mentary at the Acton website, and share ments below. ...

In response to the question, “What is the future of the faith-based initiative?” I have little confidence in the future of the faith-based initiative because conservatives who gain office are unwilling to take any fire at all in order to advance the cause beyond concept. At the same time, liberals will be unable to make productive use of the idea because of giant fissures regarding public religion in their movement. In theory, President Obama would make an ideal person to...

William F. Buckley, 1956: [I’d] sooner be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the faculty of Harvard University. Rassmussen poll results, 2009: Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided. ...