Although it was intended to be an position, the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Handel’s Messiah has e the musical diadem of the Christmas season. It has already in early January vanished from the radio, because the modern West pre-celebrates all its holidays. (The Christmas season traditionally spans the “12 days of Christmas,” from December 25 until the feast of Epiphany on January 6.) However, it never would have graced the most joyous season of the year without the entrepreneurial spirit of...

Legal historian Wim Decock of the KU Leuven recently published a study of the economic thought of the Flemish Jesuit Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623). Last week the National Catholic Register posted an interview with Decock about his book and Lessius’s contribution to economics. Lessius was one of a host of significant early modern authors who addressed the economic realities of the burgeoning European market economies. These early modern authors, despite recovery efforts by Decock and other scholars, continue to be overlooked...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio began 2020, the year he intended to e president, by asserting that Domino’s Pizza “exploited” New Year’s Eve revelers in Times Square by selling pizzas for $30 apiece. But was the mayor’s hot take on the extra dough fresh? In his first original tweet of the year, Mayor de Blasio referred to a New York Post story about this franchise’s 15-year-old tradition of delivering pizzas to the crowd. “Jacking up your prices on...

As a new decade begins, it bears pausing to celebrate the strides the human race has made toward eradicating poverty at home and around the world. This is doubly important, as the television retrospectives not only omit our growing prosperity, but so many people believe things are actually getting worse. The global misconception that poverty is spreading is especially pronounced among those who support state intervention in the economy. The website Common Dreams proclaimed, “The Evidence Pours In: Poverty Getting...

I just heard some devastating news. Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian, moralist, wife, and mother, has passed. David Brooks has written a touching obituary detailing the life and legacy of this fascinating woman: Economists measure economic change and journalists describe political change, but who captures moral change? Who captures the shifts in manners, values, and mores, how each era defines what is admirable and what is disgraceful? Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died at 97 last night, made this her central concern. She was...

Did liberty increase or decrease in each nation, and globally, in 2019? How has the last decade impacted freedom around the world? The Cato Institute measures the freedom of each nation in the world and publishes the results. “The Human Freedom Index 2019,” written by Ian Vásquez and Tanja Porčnik, ranked 162 countries – and the results are mixed. “The jurisdictions that took the top 10 places, in order, were New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Luxembourg...

This morning, as Americans go to work for the first Monday of the New Year, a growing number will see their wages rise to $15 an hour or more – thanks, not to higher minimum wage laws, but to the bustling free market. Increasingly, economists agree that in the frenetic labor market of 2020, the minimum wage has e virtually irrelevant. No one disputes that workers are earning higher salaries in 2020, and the lowest earners have received the biggest...

Recent installments in the Star Wars universe directly raise the theme of self-interest, and specifically the formation or deformation of the self. These instances help us ask the important question, “Who puts the ‘self’ in self-interest?” [Mild spoilers: If you are not current on The Mandalorian or haven’t seen The Rise of Skywalker, you may want to flag this post e back later.] In the season finale of The Mandalorian, we get a pretty full introduction to Moff Gideon, the...

For many people of faith, especially Catholics and Orthodox Christians, churches are sacred places. An older cathedral, for example, is not a museum nor merely a relic of the past, but rather a place where it is believed that grace is given through sacraments, a place where God dwells. But, as Samuel Gregg argues in Spectator USA, Europe has lost respect for places of worship, a loss felt tangibly by the Church. “In 2017 alone, according to France’s Interior Ministry,...

Jim Henson’s beloved Emmett Otter’s Jugband Christmas first entered the hearts of Canadian children in December 1977 and made its U.S. debut on HBO one year later. The musical Muppet adventure tells the story of widow Alice Otter and her tenderhearted son, Emmett, who decide the only way they can afford Christmas presents this year is to win a petition – with an exacting entrance fee. Aside from its entertainment value – including a posed by songwriter Paul Williams –...