Political Economy

Discussing “Capitalism”

Speaking personally, I’d rather discuss many things during this joyful season of Advent than “capitalism.” And yet Matthew Summers’ recent essay “In Defense of Capitalism” for The Imaginative Conservative has prompted me to comment on the...

President Trump and the American Piggy Bank

At the G-7 summit in Canada, President Donald Trump described America as “the piggy bank that everybody is robbing.” After he left Quebec, his director of Trade and Industrial Policy, Peter Navarro, added a few parting words for Prime Minister...

Viktor Orbán, George Soros, & the Battle for Hungary

Many Hungarians clearly perceive their way of life and their country as under threat and sense that influential individuals like George Soros would like them fundamentally transformed. This is a fight between nationalists and anti-nationalists...

Cultural Debris: Two Conferences & the Future of Our Civilization

There still are men and women enough among us who know what makes life worth living—enough of them to keep out the modern barbarian, if they are resolute. If they are not resolute, and if they cannot make common cause, the garment of our civilization will go...

On Straussian Teachings

The nexus between the Straussians and neoconservatives has been overstated for partisan ends, but it is still nonetheless there. Sociologically and culturally, the two movements are largely indistinguishable... The Truth About Leo Strauss by Catherine and Michael Zuckert (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Wilhelm Röpke’s Conundrums Over the Natural Family

Wilhelm Röpke grew mesmerized by population growth projections which counted 300 billion inhabitants on the Earth by the year 2300. In such an anthill existence, he asked, what would happen to those “unbought graces of life”: “nature, privacy, beauty, dignity, birds and woods and fields and flowers,...

Decadence, Free Trade, & Mercantilism

That boredom, sexual perversion, consumerism, and the general malaise of the West are to a great extent the fruits of past economic growth is long record­ed... "Conquest or superiority among other powers is not, or ought not ever to be, the object of republican...

Humane Economy or Romantic Utopia? The Vision of Wilhelm Roepke

June 20th, 1998, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the German "economic miracle." Of course, there was nothing miraculous about it. Germany's success was not due to the hard-working character of her people, or to...

The National Debt: Betraying Our Ancestors & Our Children

The national debt has surged more than half a trillion dollars in the last three weeks, as the suspension of the debt ceiling in late October has allowed the government to borrow as much as it wants. — Report in The Washington Examiner

Jeffersonian Political Economy

Economics, as practiced today, is a utilitarian and materialistic study. It is concerned with maximizing profit, with describing the actions of man as an economic being, and explaining the allegedly inevitable results of supposed economic laws. Our...

The False God of Economic Growth

Let us be clear on one point: the usual defenders of the free market—the Friedmans, Hayeks and Mises—are not primarily concerned with private property or liberty. They are firstly concerned with economic growth which mainly means continuous economic,...

A New Take on Economic Substitution

The concept of "substitution" is a familiar one in economics. Many products are used as substitutes for others such as margarine for butter and tea for coffee. If the price of one becomes too high the other...

Roepke and von Mises: The Difference

Some writers link the names of Ludwig von Mises and Wilhelm Roepke as if there were no important differences between them. Roepke is co-opted into the camp of more or less libertarian thinkers whose position is further enhanced by...