Public Discourse

Conservatives need to stop shying away from principled, as opposed to merely utilitarian, defenses of economic freedom and its associated institutions.

There is no right to lose oneself in a game of chance for the state’s benefit, and more than that there is no good in it. Video keno contracts liberty and virtue while accelerating the state’s colonization of civil society.

While there is something noble in economists’ assumption that social life is based on mutually beneficial exchange, rather than coercion and plunder, this fails to account for what philosophy, theology, and literature reveal to us about the true substance of marriage.

Good public policy can meet the needs of all Americans without redefining marriage.

Family, church, and school are the three basic people-forming institutions, and it is no wonder that they produce the best results—including economic and political ones—when they cooperate.

Economic liberty is necessary for achieving the real, non-economic goods of individuals and associations in civil society. Not the collectivist “we” of government, but the many “we’s” of civil society are the true ground of a just, and good, society.

A pilot program in New York City to give minors emergency contraception in school without telling their parents is an ineffective response to a non-existent “epidemic” of teen pregnancy.

Constitutional law has often been used to shape economies, but there are limits to the law’s ability to influence economic culture, especially when societal priorities no longer accord with constitutional principles.

Is inequality the cause of our worst social ills?

Work is at the core of our humanity, and our ownership of what we produce precedes laws demanding that we give it back to “community” in the abstract.

Close attention to particular decisions by European institutions and governments before and during the present economic crisis suggests that many have significantly infringed the rule of law.

Libertarians and conservatives should not allow their differences to impede political cooperation against the common adversary: egalitarian liberalism.

Has the Supreme Court rediscovered the institution of property? In a recent unanimous affirmation of property owners’ rights, the Court gives us reason to hope.

The Occupy Movement should be an occasion for the American left to rethink its own moral crusades, which turn out to be morally corrosive and hence incompatible with any serious commitment to social justice.

Libertarianism offers the best defense of individual rights that government can employ.

Conservatives value individual liberty as much as libertarians, but they deny that freedom from coercion is the only form of liberty.

Social activists opposed to the use of HEK-293—a kidney cell line derived from an aborted baby—in PepsiCo products should not respond with shareholder activism, because it wreaks political and economic havoc.

The negative side-effects of contraception are often ignored in our public discourse, but a truly free decision to use or not use them—and whether to use government to promote them—depends on a frank acknowledgement of their costs along with their alleged benefits.

Conservatism is misguided, arbitrary, inconsistent, and ultimately inimical to liberty and human flourishing. Libertarianism allows for human flourishing and harmony from respect and cooperation.

Libertarianism and conservatism are often lumped together, but there are fundamental differences between the two philosophies that make them incompatible.

Neither liberal nor libertarian, a principled conservative way of helping the poor.

It’s time to end the corporate income tax: it strains job-creating businesses, punishes workers rather than capital owners, encourages wealthy companies to find loopholes in the tax system, and allows some of the richest among us to pay strangely low personal income tax rates.

A successful account of social justice must affirm the primacy of communities, and institutions directed by communities, over both the individual and the state in promoting human flourishing.

The Obama administration’s efforts to regulate the cellular-phone service market through a decades-old trust-busting ideology is at odds with the courts’ more recent “new learning” approach to market competition. And there are lessons here for pro-lifers.

Economic, political, and ethical principles that encourage limited government must interact in our effort to secure long-term economic stability.

The eurozone’s current crisis is an opportunity for Europe to explore new monetary options that challenge the hitherto dominant vision of the European Union’s economic future.

Conservatives shouldn’t ignore or attack social justice, but must articulate sound principles of social justice.

Rawlsian “public reason” approaches to human capabilities are insufficient bases for social justice.

Private property should be preserved and protected because of its deep contribution to human well-being.

Growing national debt-to-income ratios need not become a threat to American solvency or a long-run impediment to implementation of our social policy choices. Historically-based approaches to social objectives can be improved through advances in economics.

Candidates in the 2012 presidential race should champion two principles for reviving America’s economy: the Adam Smith principle for limiting government and the subsidiarity principle for regulating government intervention.

The attempts by both the right and the left to politicize our Constitution must be firmly rejected for the sake of our nation’s health and prosperity.

Five suggestions for how our nation can regain a healthy marriage culture and the economic prosperity and personal flourishing that comes with it. The second in a two-part series.

Research shows the positive economic effect of two-biological-parent families on our society. Single parenthood and other alternative family structures not only hurt our economy, they hurt our children, those who care for them, and those for whom our children will care later in life. The first in a two-part series.

Our current economic debates underscore the case for an approach to political economy that rejects social contract theory and embraces a robust conception of human flourishing.

How and why considering distribution will yield a complete economic science. The second in a two-part series.

A new book challenges us to rediscover the missing element of our economic science. The first in a two-part series.

Aristotelian virtue ethics has very little to say about what is a good political structure or economic system.

Alasdair MacIntyre may be wrong about the details of finance, but he is right on the largest questions of political economy.

Public employee unions aren’t the only seekers of government largesse.

An uncertain legal landscape puts future prosperity at risk.

It is at our own peril that we ignore the nexus between moral convictions, the institutions in which they are realized, and our economic culture.

To stimulate job creation, Democrats favor government spending and Republicans favor tax cuts, but is there a more direct way?

The practice of socially responsible investing, often associated with opposition to apartheid or support for environmental causes, can also be a way to battle the harms of pornography.

Social conservatives must understand and embrace America’s traditional economic culture before they can contribute to its renewal. Economic conservatives must expel the infection of shallow anthropology, vulgar utilitarianism, and metaphysical blindness that they picked up from progressivism in the 20th century.

The Tea Party taps into the full social and cultural power of transcendent moral appeals in a way that social conservatives have never been able to do. The first in a two-part series.

The government’s ability to print money at will is a nearly unquestioned feature of today’s economic order, but recent crises have highlighted its hazards.

In charting our future monetary policies, we should remember the trade-offs of competing alternatives.

Expansive and expensive welfare programs have brought European social democracies to the verge of catastrophe. Now the dynamics of democracy may be an impediment to economic reform.

The bailout of Greece is a stunning about-face that calls into question Europe’s commitment to a stable currency.