Technocrats and cosmopolitan politicians are abetting globalization for political influence, economic gain, and utopian delusion. We might add another incentive: A forgotten or deliberately ignored reverence for civic life. Might a hyper-focus on global advancement be contributing to a growing state of national anomie in liberal democracies worldwide? Globalization has become an ineluctable reality. [...]
Avarice brings to mind the image of a hoarder—one who simply wants things for himself. However, while wanting more of something is certainly one side of avarice, it might not be the most important side. The image that always comes to mind for me when thinking about the vice of greed, or avarice, is [...]
Is capitalism itself intrinsically “woke”? In “The Distributist” column in the latest issue of the American Chesterton Society’s magazine, Gilbert (for which I am a contributing editor), John Howting argues that “ ‘Woke Capitalism’ is Capitalism.”[1] It’s a rather odd claim since “capitalists” are often accused of wanting “unfettered markets” in which the only [...]
John Henry Newman wished people to flee from the love of money, but he didn’t wish them to stop making it. He wished them to flee similarly from love of erudition for its own sake, but he didn’t want them to stop loving the Lord with mind as well as heart, soul, and strength. [...]
Everybody agrees student loan debt is a large problem. In the United States approximately $1.5 trillion is currently owed by around 45 million people at an average of over $32,000 per borrower. While relatively few borrowers owe more than $75,000, that relatively few includes over 4 million people. Another 24 million borrowers owe more [...]
While there is a good deal of cant about how paying higher taxes is “patriotic,” most people instinctively recoil from taxes and don’t hesitate to avoid paying any more than they have to. So, is taxation moral? Or is it, as some libertarian thinkers would have it, simply “theft”? How much ought I to [...]
For much of the last two centuries, many have treated their lives as consisting of three stages: the play and education of youth, a long “middle age” of work and the raising of family, and retirement, which means a long period of leisure and play. But is there something both unpatriotic and, dare I [...]
Prudence takes into account a deeper wisdom about the human condition than can be gleaned from a simple cost-benefit analysis. It understands that human communities are not merely about justice and the Gross Domestic Product, but about love. And sacrificial love doesn’t hesitate to rush in even against the worst odds. Last week I [...]
I like the idea of celebrating “homo faber”—man the maker or worker. Work is something that is part of our dignity, a triumph of the human spirit. The celebration of work is something desperately needed in our culture today. “Why are we celebrating Labor Day? You don’t belong to a labor union,” one of [...]
Everyday life is the true setting for your lives as Christians. Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work and your affections are. There you have your daily encounter with Christ. It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must [...]
Will we have a recession in the next year or so? I don’t know. As an old joke has it—one that I’ve seen several times in the last week or so—many were those smart enough to have predicted seven of the last three recessions. My question, moral rather than strictly predictive, is whether we [...]
Early in the morning factory whistle blows Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light It's the working, the working, just the working life Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in [...]
In order to avoid socialism, we need to embrace a true vision of what business is for; CEOs and shareholders should be thinking about their businesses as having deeper, human ends. While businesses aren’t charities, they require justice and charity in those who own and direct them. A couple years ago at a conference [...]
The real problem in the modern world is not that there are too many babies, but too few. In the end, both economics and environmentalism depend upon people. Money and the earth are made for man, and not man for money and the earth. The fashionable mindset among celebrities, royals, and too many ordinary [...]