Old-style leftist politics is making a eback in Latin America. In Brazil, an avowed socialist and anti-capitalist has taken power in a landslide vote. Luiz Lula da Silva’s first day as president ended with a dinner with Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Also joining him was Venezuela president Hugo Chavez, who is pursuing a leftist agenda and promising a full crackdown on “terrorists” and “traitors” who oppose him. In Ecuador, new president Lucio Gutierrez, a retired army colonel, holds similar political...

The renewed emphasis on the study of Roman Catholic social teaching and how it can contribute to the rebuilding of the culture of life presents many challenges. A formidable one is relaying the essentials of that teaching to the average person in a way that simply and concretely captures the imagination. This is especially necessary today as the linkage between religious values and good citizenship appears all but broken. Indeed, people who believe in God are being pushed farther...

Sometimes we advocates of the free and virtuous society e so wrapped up in defending its technical merits that we neglect to deliberate on the broader, more fundamental reason for promoting a free economy as part of this society. To avoid (or correct) this tendency, we should pause to wipe clean whatever particular lens we have been looking through and ponder what the true goal for the market should be. That goal should be solidarity. Solidarity includes accepting that...

President George W. Bush has stated that the goal of the military campaign is to bring liberty to the people of Iraq. Although he is less specific about exactly which types of liberty, he would surely include economic and religious liberties. The president is a strong supporter of freedom in the marketplace, and he is mitted to freedom and vitality in matters of faith and religion. But some might wonder whether it is doable in Iraq, a country notably...

We devote Religion & Liberty to recognizing and discussing the delta that forms when faith, religion, liberty, economics, and e together. Depicting the exact contours of this entire delta is, of course, much too ambitious for this short column. Instead, I would like to consider just one of the tributaries pouring into it, namely, liberty. Liberty should be understood as something that is not an end in itself. True liberty remains accountable to greater principles of faith and morality....

I recently attended a seminar at which a speaker expressed his strong conviction that a deep conflict exists between seeking God’s kingdom and conducting a successful business enterprise. The speaker then went on to blame the market economy for promoting a system inimical to the Christian faith. Casting the market economy in the image of a giant octopus, he described how human beings e the fish caught in its ubiquitous tentacles. Even if a trapped fish manages to lop...

One need not search far to find the supreme ethic by which we should evaluate all of our actions. The holy Scripture is clear that we must love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and that we must love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:36, 39). Love for God and neighbor must serve as the basis for any ethics. Here I am primarily interested in examining the...

Contrary to the libertine assumptions pervading our contemporary society, property rights, liberty, and even life itself – the bases of any functional economic order – do not exist as ends in themselves, but rather as elements within a greater framework of religious faith and morality. Historically, Christianity established this religious and moral framework for Western culture. Today, to the extent a larger framework is recognized at all, contemporary advocates, both Christian and secular, tend to rely on human dignity...