What constitutes a well-ordered house from the national perspective? How do we know what order it is in? According to the conventional wisdom we need the statistics of aggregate income, spending and output. We need, in other words, the GNP approach whose figures bombard us whenever we read something about the national economy on particular [...]
Whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox or orthodox Protestant, the Bible is the basic book of the Christian faith. One may well ask if it has anything to say about how we should live, not only about the fruits of salvation, but about what kind of government we are to have or what kind of economy? [...]
The late historian M.E. Bradford’s examination of early American history provides us with a framework for understanding the American experience and so gives a standard to clarify our present darkness. His Old Whiggism is a rhetoric of the heart, an appeal to stand in the old ways, to keep alive the spirit of the original [...]
Edmund Burke allowed his fear of the French Revolution to cloud his judgment of a fitting response to the needs of agricultural workers. He was blind to the dangers of monopoly and concentration of economic power, to the possible ways of intervening that conform to the character of a market economy. “The mistakes which have [...]
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 systems.” —Charles Pinckney of South Carolina The Rise of Neo-Mercantilism. [...]
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, technical and social change. For example, when airplanes became popular, air travel would have been very difficult [...]
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 whatever weight or prestige his name may give. Since Roepke was an Austrian economist and former [...]
Wilhelm Roepke The brass mouth trumpeting the virtues of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is Ben Wattenburg. His views display the kind of thick-headedness that Wilhelm Roepke fought against so valiantly. What’s this impenetrable cloud made of that compels him and his kind to stumble along like the proverbial blind [...]
Introduction Contributing to the multi-faceted crisis Americans now face is the loss of those values and principles that are essential to a healthy economy. We could mention the incestuous relationships between business and politics, the avarice of large banking institutions, misguided Federal Reserve policy, the irrationality of Wall Street investors, and the Gordon Gekko motto [...]
During World War II, philosopher Arthur Lovejoy tried to explain the reasons for the international crisis and the totalitarianism in Germany. According to his view, the roots of the trouble could be found in the German Romantic period which ranged approximately between the years 1780 to 1830. During this time certain relatively new ideas took [...]
In educating for democracy, we must also educate for economy. This follows from the fundamental truth that government and economy have an indivisible relationship. We are not free to mix any form of government with any economic form. In the present context, we will apply this truth to three possible visions of economy: the globalist, [...]
Wilhelm Roepke How can a German economist be called a Southerner? Obviously not geographically but in the important sense that Southern Agrarians came to understand, as a possession of the mind and spirit. That Wilhelm Roepke’s mind and spirit, embodying the best of the German tradition, share significantly in the essential features of [...]
Wilhelm Roepke’s work is an exposition of the essence of Western thought that can be summed up in the word “liberal” properly understood. Much of Wilhelm Roepke’s work can be understood as an exposition of the essence of Western, Occidental thought, a contribution to civilization that can be summed up in the word “liberal” properly [...]
Berry’s economic program, what he calls the “little economy,” is a smaller wheel in the larger motion of the “Great Economy.” To understand the former, it is vital to grasp the latter. In the following, then, Berry’s vision of the broader drama of human action is set forth, followed by a presentation of his narrower [...]