You have to hand it to Theodore Dalrymple: he doesn’t mince words. In an August 2012 piece in The Telegraph, Dalrymple let it be known that British plans to continue international aid to India are a, well…bad idea: …our continued aid to India is nevertheless a manifestation of the national administrative, mental and ethical torpor, as well as petence and corruption, that is leading us inexorably to economic and social disaster. It is high time we stopped such aid, and...

Video: At the Democratic National Convention, delegates opposed to adding language on God, Israel’s capital to platform shout, “No!” in floor vote. On Powerline, John Hinderaker quotes from a recent Rasmussen Reports poll to show that “Democrats, bluntly put, have e the party of those who don’t go to church.” Among those who rarely or never attend church or other religious services, Obama leads by 22 percentage points. Among those who attend services weekly, Romney leads by 24. The candidates...

Last night, there was a moment at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte that may have alarmed some. The line from a video produced by the host city of Charlotte, declared, “government is the only thing we all belong to.” While some have simply used the line as a reference point for partisan purposes, it needs to be widely discussed. I have to admit I found the words profoundly disturbing. Not because I blame Democrats as a whole but rather...

Gideon Strauss, my friend and sometime debate-partner, is the executive director of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary, and this week marks the launch of the center’s Fieldnotes magazine, which aims to “provide examples and stories and practical wisdom from men and women who are intensely involved in the day-to-day work of managing businesses, non-profits, churches, and other organizations.” In his introduction to Fieldnotes, Strauss invokes the powerful image of sitting in a chair as...

It doesn’t seem that anyone would WANT to live in a slum. But that is not necessarily true, according to Charles Kenny of Foreign Policy. In fact, for many of the world’s poor, a slum can offer opportunities and services not available in rural areas. Across the world today, thanks to vaccines and underground sewage systems, average life expectancies in big cities are considerably higher than those in the countryside; in sub-Saharan Africa, cities with a population over 1 million...

Messianic claims and expectations about politicians are problematic whether e from the left or from the right, says Ray Nothstine. In his speech at the John Locke Foundation, Nothstine discusses the problems associated with political messianism in American politics. Click here to watch a video of the entire speech. ...

Sign of the times of the day: Food-stamp use reached a record 46.7 million people in June, the government said, as Democrats prepare to nominate President Barack Obama for a second term with the economy as a chief issue in the campaign. [. . .] Food-stamp spending, which more than doubled in four years to a record $75.7 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2011, is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s biggest annual expense. Republicans in Congress have...

Margarita A. Mooney considers how personalism has influenced the development of Catholic social doctrine: When people think of Catholic social teaching the first thing es to their mind may be the call to charity or solidarity with the poor, as exemplified by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. However, Gregg contends that for Wojytla/John Paul II, a proper understanding of human work is central to all Catholic social teaching. So what does John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens say about human work? I...

Should we use spending cuts or tax increases to reduce the government’s budget deficit? New research suggests it depends on how much we like recessions: This paper studies whether fiscal corrections cause large output losses. We find that it matters crucially how the fiscal correction occurs. Adjustments based upon spending cuts are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax-based ones. Spending-based adjustments have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at...

StanfordeconomistsRuss RobertsandJohn Taylor offer a helpful discussion potential GDP, recessions, and recoveries. parison of previous recession/recovery cycles to the most recent one helps to illuminate just how unusual (read: terrible) our current recovery has been. (Via: Cafe Hayek) ...