Why do we go to work, day after day, year after year for most of our lives? Sure, we most of us have to “make a living?” But is that our only motivation? Is there a better reason why we should work? Matthew Kaemingk thinks so: Aboveeach of thesepartial reasons for work, I would like to propose an alternative motivation that should qualify, define, limit, and rule them all. This reason is simple but not narrow. It is focused on...

Last September the New York City Board of Health approved a measure that would ban the sale of sugary drinks over 16 ounces. Politicians justified the action because of the city’s escalating obesity rate and research linking sugary drinks to weight gain. Overall, care for obesity-related illnesses costs the New York City nearly $2.8 billion annually, according to city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley. Politicians, then, believe they have the authority to legislate how much of a beverage citizens can...

Why do the wicked prosper? This plaintive query is a consistent cry from the psalmist and the prophets. As Jeremiah puts it, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” The concern in large part has to do with injustice; why do those who are so morally and spiritually bankrupt enjoy such great temporal blessings? Over at the IEA blog, John Meadowcroft passes along an answer, at least insofar as it relates...

In a prime example of how irony is lost on politicians, lawmakers in North Carolina are proposing to prohibit people receiving welfare from playing in the lottery. Perhaps the legislators aren’t aware of what state lotteries are, in effect if not intent, designed to do: redistribute the e of mostly poor Americans to a handful of other citizens—and to the state’s coffers. Nevertheless, the lawmaker’s moral intuitions seem to be leading them to good intentions. As Rep. Paul Stam says,...

Just after the Presidential inauguration several leaders raised questions about whether or not President Obama should have sworn the oath of office by placing his hand on the Bible. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church—a Protestant mega-church in Seattle—after seeing Obama sworn in said, “Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.” ments stirred up a firestorm of...

Guidelines for nonprofits are often misunderstood, says Dimitri Cavalli, and they are sometimes misrepresented by those seeking to quiet churches: Every so often, there are calls for the federal government to revoke the tax-exempt status of churches. The mon arguments made for taxing churches are that exemptionsdeny the government important sources of revenueto pay its bills, and that many churches (usually the ones that continue to teach traditional sexuality morality such as the Catholic, Evangelical, and Mormon churches) oftenabuse their...

There’s an old proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Life is often difficult, full of challenges, trials, and travails. But it is a testament to the human spirit, created in the image of God to mature and develop morally, spiritually, and intellectually, that in the face of such troubles human ingenuity often wins out. Brad Morgan, a dairy farmer turned fertilizer magnate featured in the documentary The Call of the Entrepreneur, put it this way: “You put your butt...

Justice Antonin Scalia caused quite the stir by attending President Obama’s inauguration ceremony wearing a custom-made replica of the painter’s hat depicted in a famous portrait of St. Thomas More, the well-known Catholic statesman and martyr. Whether Scalia intended it or not, observers quickly translated the act as a quiet game of connect-the-dots between the administration’s punitive HHS mandate and Henry VIII’s executioner, leading conservatives to applaud while progressives don their own less fashionable bonnets of protest. Although I don’t...

The Acton Institute has again been named a leading think tank by the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program. Writing about this new, 2012 ranking, Alejandro Chafuen, explained what constitutes a good think tank on the Forbes website: A “market-oriented” think tank is grounded on the reality that respect for private property within a context of rule of law with limited government has been the path for the wealth of nations. Think tanks that are not market-oriented...

Sojourners’ Jim Wallis has been at the Davos gathering in Switzerland and is urging us to be guided by a new Davos “covenant.” If you’ve never heard of Davos, Michael Miller’s RealClear Politics piece “Davos Capitalism” describes the gathering and its unassailable hubris this way: Davos capitalism, a managerial capitalism run by an enlightened elite–politicians, business leaders, technology gurus, bureaucrats, academics, and celebrities–all gathered together trying to make the economic world smarter or more humane…. And we looked up to...