Eric, Gannon, and Nate Schlueter have graciously asked us to present our arguments on the relationship between capitalism and Christianity. The subtitle is something to the effect of “can a good Christian” embrace “the morality of capitalism.” Whether I should or not, I will interpret this question in my own way and attempt to answer [...]
Nikolai Lenin said that when the time came to hang the capitalists, they would trip over each other to sell the communists the necessary rope. One is reminded also of the similar case of a Canadian mining firm whose owner in order to keep the business worked with Castro and generously donated money to his [...]
Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century The great temptation and delusion of socialist regimes is to attempt to guarantee the value of things rather than the ownership of them. This was also the great mistake of the Bush and Obama administrations’ response to the crisis of 2008. Value depends on dedicated [...]
When Ronald Reagan became president in January 1981, the nation had just endured a recession the year before. Then another recession materialized on Reagan’s watch in a few months’ time, in the fall of 1981. The labor force participation rate—which measures the proportion of the population at work or looking—had been rising throughout the 1970s, but [...]
Forbes columnist extraordinaire Peter Ferrara was once kind enough to call my own Econoclasts “a brilliant, overlooked book.” I know another brilliant book that wasn’t overlooked when it came out last year (it was a bestseller), James Rickards’s Currency Wars, but it sure could do with a dose of renewed publicity and attention about now. [...]
The phrase “compassionate conservatism” is of recent origin. While any number of politicians have laid claim to it, one thing is certain: it was born of the worry that being labeled a “conservative,” simply, would cause you to be portrayed as lacking in basic human feelings, particularly for the plight of the poor. Thus “compassionate [...]
The charge about the old days of the American economy—the nineteenth century, the “Gilded Age,” the era of the “robber barons”—was that it was always beset by a cycle of boom and bust. Whatever nice runs of expansion and opportunity that did come, they always seemed to be coupled with a pretty cataclysmic depression right [...]
In a discussion with another famous conservative, Richard Weaver objected to the view that the solution of our problems lies in following in the footsteps of “our ancestors.” This was not enough, he argued, for we must ask “Which ancestors?” After all, some were wise while others were foolish. In a similar manner we may [...]
At the famous Federal Reserve confab at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Chairman Ben Bernanke laid the groundwork for Quantitative Easing III. He couldn’t contain himself about how well the first two versions of the big Fed asset-purchase program had turned out over the last few years—unemployment is down from the peak and all that. Bernanke even [...]
One contemplates the power, depth, and breadth of the finest 18th-century minds only with some trepidation and humility. Or at least, one should. The favorite study of the great men of that day, famed editor of The Nation E.L. Godkin explained in 1900, was the glorification of the person against political power. In “opposition to [...]
Francis Graham Wilson Francis Graham Wilson (1901-1976), an eminent political scientist, lifelong scholar of public opinion, and a central figure in the postwar American conservative intellectual movement, was born near Junction, Texas, to Horace Ernest and Stella Jane (Graham) Wilson. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1923 and earned a master’s [...]
Here are some words we did not hear from Sen. Barack Obama as he campaigned for the presidency back in 2008, as the Great Recession gathered: “Now, I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have….[T]he truth is it will take more than a few years for us to solve [...]
Mitt Romney has conceded that his thoughts, expressed at that Boca Raton, Fla., fundraiser, were “not elegantly” stated. Those mocking him might concede he has tabled one of the mega-issues of our time. Can America continue down the path President Obama is taking us on, to a time soon and certain when a majority of [...]
Paul Volcker The Republicans have put some serious oomph in their presidential campaign over the last month. First Mitt Romney picked Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, a move which not only fired-up a very good portion of the electorate, but by all accounts lifted Romney’s own spirits on the trail. Now the Republicans [...]