About Jay Wesley Richards

Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is co-author of the Ignatius Press book The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot. An Assistant Research Professor in the School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America, he is also a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and Executive Editor of The Stream. He has authored and co-authored many books, He has written and edited many books including New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated, and Indivisible; Money, Greed, and God; The Privileged Planet; and The Untamed God.

Tolkien, Wagner, & the Rings of Power

By |2023-05-21T21:19:36-05:00December 16th, 2014|Categories: Books, Christianity, Featured, J.R.R. Tolkien|

Did Bilbo Baggins steal the One Ring from Gollum? Tolkien geeks debate the issue to this day. The more interesting question: Did author J.R.R. Tolkien steal the ring from composer Richard Wagner? In our chapter on the ring in our recently released book The Hobbit Party, we bring in everything from Plato and the Panopticon [...]

Tolkien, Ordered Liberty, and Catholic Social Teaching

By |2017-07-16T15:46:23-05:00November 26th, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Hilaire Belloc, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Pearce|

In Joseph Pearce’s second critique of our work on Tolkien’s political thought, he begins by saying he hardly knows where to start. We would like to suggest, respectfully, that Mr. Pearce start by reading our book, where we develop our arguments at some length. In his second post, as with the first, he refers to [...]

Tolkien vs. Belloc on Distributism: A Response to Joseph Pearce

By |2021-06-28T21:18:12-05:00November 10th, 2014|Categories: Christianity, Distributism, Hilaire Belloc, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joseph Pearce|

Joseph Pearce, whose work we appreciate, has issued a critical response in The Imaginative Conservative to our new book from Ignatius Press about J.R.R. Tolkien’s political and economic vision. Or rather, he has issued a critical response to a short answer one of us gave in an interview about the book. Mr. Pearce begins: “In [...]

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Vision of Just War

By |2018-10-09T13:45:11-05:00November 1st, 2014|Categories: Books, Christendom, Christianity, Featured, J.R.R. Tolkien, Just War, War, World War I|

Too many pundits, politicians, and priests nowadays treat war as a relic of a barbaric past. President Obama speaks for many when he denounces ISIS and other terrorist groups by invoking the date on the calendar. Nevertheless, he has found himself re-entering a war in the Middle East that he first opposed and then claimed [...]

Why Libertarians Need God

By |2019-04-18T13:22:36-05:00March 9th, 2014|Categories: Atheism, Ayn Rand, Christianity, Libertarians, Ludwig von Mises|

Does God underwrite our freedom, or undermine it? There are thousands of self-styled “libertarians” who would argue the latter. They actively oppose the religious commitments of most social conservatives, many of them convinced that materialism is the best metaphysical home for what we might call “libertarian values”—individual rights, freedom and personal responsibility, reason, and moral [...]

Bill Gates Responds to the Overpopulation Myth

By |2014-03-08T11:43:07-06:00February 15th, 2014|Categories: Culture, Economics|

Bill Gates Bill Gates is largely a conventional thinker, but he’s still willing to challenge the conventional wisdom from time to time. In his annual letter, released in January, Bill challenges what he calls “three myths that block progress for the poor.” The third myth he takes on is this: “Helping the Poor [...]

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