The Supreme Court’s ruling that it does not violate the First Amendment for parents to use school vouchers to send children to religious schools has set off a firestorm of debate over the establishment clause of the Constitution. For a society that is so overwhelmingly religious, as much now as ever before in American history, we seem to have grave difficulties reaching a balanced view of the relationship between faith and public life. Those who would immediately dismiss this...

One of the most vital insights of modern social thought is the importance of mediating institutions–churches, schools, fraternal organizations, professional associations, and even clubs–for a free society. Not only are they effective, sometimes crucial, in providing services of all sorts, they are, as Tocqueville pointed out, a bulwark of freedom against the encroaching power of the state. The recognition of the consequence of these associations is especially significant for Americans because we have been particularly adept at forming them....

I demand nothing better, you may be sure, than that you should really have discovered outside of us a benevolent and inexhaustible being, calling itself the state, which has bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, ointment for all wounds, balm for all suffering, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all problems, truth for all minds, distractions for all varieties of boredom, milk for children and wine for old age,...

“It won’t be an pany that will change the world,” declares TV producer Philomena Ryan in splashy, full-page newspaper ads sponsored by BP corporation. “BP” used to stand for “British Petroleum,” but on the ad we are given to understand that “BP” now stands for “Beyond Petroleum.” BP shareholders beware: This ad campaign seems to suggest that BP is flirting with going out of business. The claim “[i]t won’t be an pany that will change the world” is narrowly...

Globalization has emerged as a new paradigm for describing the way in which the human family can relate to each other. Globalization is the increased interconnectedness of all peoples on the face of the earth. We can now more easily, rapidly, and cheaply move, and thus share, ourselves, our consumer goods, our material and human capital, and the values prise our respective cultures. Our ever-increasing ability to share our God-given plementary gifts with one another holds with it the...

In 1946, Congress enacted changes in the tax code that permitted publicly held business corporations to deduct charitable donations in amounts up to five percent of their federal taxable e. Congress, of course, did not panies to make charitable donations, but it did wish to encourage them to do so. The legislation became one more landmark in a running controversy about corporate social responsibility. Simply put, this controversy concerns the question of whether publicly-held business corporations (sole proprietorships and...

Tibor Machan’s Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society provides a fascinating and thorough treatment of the role of virtue in a society characterized by limited government, freedom of association, and economic liberty. Its thesis, according to Machan, is that “Generosity is a moral virtue that cannot flourish in a welfare state or in any sort mand economy, because to be generous is to voluntarily help others in certain ways. It will flourish in a free society.” Generosity and virtue cannot...

The collapse of Communism as a world ideological force occasions not only a thorough reassessment of many of the economic and political presuppositions which were fundamental to the post-World War II world, but also a reevaluation of many of the historical interpretations founded on these same presuppositions and widespread during the same period. In fact, one of the major criticisms of the caste of professional historians and political scientists in the United States is their failure as a group,...

As the readers of this publication are probably aware, environmental regulation is a hot subject for conservatives right now. In the battle to reduce the size and scope of the federal government, we are seeing the first counterattacks to what has been a two-decade-old regulatory jihad by the federal government. And to assist in the revolt, a slew of conservative books and pamphlets have e available detailing not only the quasi-religious, socialist nature of the Green worldview, but also...

Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man, argues that ideological conflicts are over and that the world is converging on democracy-cum-capitalism, with national economies integrated into a global one. However, democracy and capitalism require a healthy civil society, which itself depends on “a people’s habits, customs, and ethics,” which must be “nourished through an increased awareness and respect for culture.” (p. 5) Everyone, Fukuyama maintains, has a deep desire “to have his or her...

Robert P. George is a Princeton professor, first Vice President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, and a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. In this book, he has done an admirable job of combining his fields of philosophy (John Finnis was his mentor), law, and political science to analyze the difficult question of how liberal democracy can enact laws that seek to promote civility and personal goodness while upholding basic individual liberties. Although much of the...

Recent years have brought to the fore a drumbeat plaints from evangelical intellectuals bemoaning the ineffectual work of evangelical intellectuals. This theme has been sounded recently by Os Guinness, David Wells, and John Seel, among others, and now Mark Noll weighs in. Noll believes that American evangelicals have made small contribution to the intellectual life of the nation and so have failed not only in their civic duty, but also their religious responsibilities. Christians who take seriously the sovereignty...