In the July 22 Wall Street Journal, the editorial staff takes off on Congress for “bashing career colleges.” As a recruiter focusing primarily on manufacturing industries — where machines pound, pour, slit, weld, paint and deliver what the public demands and the guys up front have been able to book — I’ve noticed an increased lack of capable and eager young people for both the jobs on the shop floor and the ones in engineering. The WSJ article suggests that...

Today marks the 40th Anniversary of the one of the greatest feats of human exploration, courage and innovation: man’s setting foot on the surface of the moon. Responding heroically to the challenges of the “Space Race” (while its arch-nemesis, the Soviet Union, was clearly in the lead), the United States stood proud to represent the free and enterprising West. To put the challenges of victory into perspective, America was running adrift amid pretty rough waters at the time: two great...

Kathryn Lopez, editor of National Review Online, has a column on Caritas in Veritate titled, “Liberal Catholics Can’t Handle the Truth.” Lopez looks at mentary on Caritas in Veritate, especially by the left, and shows why the encyclical should not be politicized. The encyclical is about truth, which can not be bent to advance a political agenda, she asserts. Kishore Jayabalan, director of Acton’s Rome office, was also quoted in Lopez’s article: Neither side . . . seems ready to...

John Hartley, the founder and editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies, does for that journal something like what I did for the Journal of Markets & Morality awhile back. He takes his experience as an editor to reflect on the current state of the scholarly journal amid the challenges and opportunities in the digital age. Hartley opens his study, “Lament for a Lost Running Order? Obsolescence and Academic Journals,” by concluding that “the academic journal is obsolete,” at...

We’ve said a lot already and will probably say a lot more about health care reform—its importance justifies the attention—but here are a few brief responses to President Obama’s remarks last night (based on the prepared notes posted at the White House web site). If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the...

A recent Fox News piece on President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren, makes for spooky reading, dramatizing where well-intended intellectuals can end up when they take a zero-sum view of our planet’s resources. Read More… A recent Fox News piece on President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren, makes for spooky reading, dramatizing where well-intended intellectuals can end up when they take a zero-sum view of our planet’s resources. In a 1977 course book that Holdren co-authored with environmental activists Paul...

Zenit published my article on the pope’s new social encyclical: Encyclical Offers Opportunity to “Think With the Church” By Jennifer Roback Morse SAN MARCOS, California, JULY 17, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate” is his contribution to the course of Catholic social teaching. mentators seem to read this document as if it were a think-tank white paper, and ask whether the Pope endorses their particular policy preferences. I must say that I surprised myself by not reflexively reading it...

Back in 1983, economist Thomas Sowell wrote The Economics and Politics of Race, an in-depth look at how different ethnic and immigrant groups fared in different countries throughout human history. He noted that some groups, like the overseas Chinese, Japanese, and Jews, tended to thrive economically no matter where they went, bringing new skills to the countries that they arrived in and often achieving social acceptance even after facing considerable hatred and violence. Other groups, like the Irish and the...

The ius gentium, or law of nations, has an important place in legal history. Variously conceived, the law of nations often referred to the code of conduct for dealing with foreign peoples according to their own local, national, or regional standards. As a form of natural law, the ius gentium has often been appealed to as a basis for determining what has been believed everywhere, always, by everyone. It’s an approach used, for instance, with some qualification by C.S. Lewis...

Rev. Robert A. Sirico had two recent appearances on Relevant Radio’s Drew Mariani Show to discuss the new social encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI. His first appearance was prior to the release of the encyclical and he explained how Christians who support the free economy believe that it should not be based on greed. To have a just society, we must have just people. When money es the end of a person, and a person’s whole life is directed to...