One way to think about the role of responsibility in a free society is to imagine a society where freedom is absent. Writers from ancient times have drawn sketches of just this sort of society. These imagined Utopias–conjured up by Plato, Thomas More, and the medieval monk Campanella–have all been similar in their broad outlines. Property is held mon and distributed by the magistrates according to need. Children are raised collectively. There is no freedom of association, freedom of...

Most would agree that the rule of law is an absolute requirement for any society wishing to enjoy order, prosperity, and freedom, but what is the nature of this law, that we claim ought to rule? The typical modern understanding is that law is something decreed by executive officials, legislative assemblies, or bureaucratic agencies. Often forgotten is that this view of law has not been the predominant perspective through most of Anglo-American history. Rather, the Anglo-American legal/political tradition has...

A French woman was raised a Roman Catholic but reveals that today she no longer considers herself one. Indeed, she has taken herself off the church rolls. When asked why, one might expect from her the sorts plaints usually leveled against established religion. But not in this case. Her answer came directly and without qualification: She could no longer afford to pay the taxes. It turns out that in France, to be a member of a church means to...

When the poet and novelist Robert Graves titled his account of the period between the two world wars The Long Weekend, he was summoning the sort of irony appropriate for a period that seems to us now a feckless pause between world crises. Certainly the “Roaring Twenties” retain a bit of luminosity, but the 1930s do not retain any sheen, in large measure due to the rampant, and eventually tragic, political polarization of the decade. The far Right and...

Pope John Paul II places his teaching about economics and the social order within the framework of his Christian personalism, in which the human person is the starting point of his analysis and the primary criterion of his evaluation. He has made the cornerstone of his entire pontificate the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the true nature of the human person is fully revealed in Jesus Christ and that every person has a fundamental vocation revealed by...

The Vatican e under pressure from the United States to shun Iraq, the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, during the travels of Pope John Paul II. The State Department is reportedly concerned that the pope’s scheduled December visit will be manipulated by Saddam Hussein “for political purposes.” No doubt. There are few heads of state anywhere whose political motivations are more suspect than Saddam’s; meanwhile, the pope’s motivations are unquestionably religious and humanitarian. It should be clear whose message...

Much of the modern-day concern about the existence of monopolies is woefully misdirected. The government’s current assault against Microsoft provides good evidence of a very misinformed understanding about what constitutes a detrimental monopoly. As D. T. Armentano has pointed out in connection to the case, “[Microsoft] earned its market position by innovating a user-friendly operating system at minimal cost to the consumer…. That peted vigorously for market share cannot be doubted; but more important, mitted neither force nor fraud...

Proponents of third-world debt relief are lobbying plete forgiveness of loans to poor countries in or by the year 2000. Some go on to argue that the citizens of these nations do not even owe the debt because it was borrowed by past corrupt governments for political and military purposes. All point out the moral issues behind debt relief, for such nations are unable to spend enough on education, health care, welfare reform, and infrastructure because they are saddled...

From the very first pages of the Book of Genesis it is clear that all creation is ultimately a gift from God and that man was created to be his steward of this creation for the benefit of all God’s children. As captured in Gaudium et Spes, a Vatican II document, “God intended the earth with everything contained in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus, under the leadership of justice and in pany of...

The Yucatan was the center point of one of the most im- portant moral debates in history. It can be summarized in the title of the book, In Defense of the Indians: The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapa, Against the Persecutors and Slanderers of the Peoples of the New World Discovered Across the Seas. The Friar and Bishop, Bartolome de Las Casas, defended...

In 1997 the Media Research Center surveyed prime-time television’s portrayal of the businessman. The results, while not surprising, were sobering. The study found that, on television, mitted far more crimes (29.2 percent) than those in all other occupations, including career criminals (9.7 percent). Overall, businessmen were shown making a contribution to society 25 percent of the time, but they cheated to get ahead almost 30 percent. As I say, sobering but not surprising. We are (far too) accustomed to...

In 1958, an eighty-seven-year-old Stoney Indian by the name of Walking Buffalo spoke to an audience in London, England. The question before him that day was something like: “Why, in the end, could white Americans and native Americans not get along?” He gave this extraordinary answer: We were lawless people, but we were on pretty good terms with the Great Spirit, creator and ruler of all. You whites assumed we were savages. You didn’t understand our prayers.… We saw...