Lasting reform of our monetary systems require serious rethinking of the state’s role vis-à-vis money.
Author: Samuel Gregg (Samuel Gregg)
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Shedding Light on Progressivism’s Dark Side
A new book details the progressive movement’s reliance on eugenics and race science as well as its effort to exclude the disabled, blacks, immigrants, the poor, and women from full participation in American society.
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Tocqueville and Democracy’s Fall in America
For Alexis de Tocqueville, American democracy’s passion for equality was a potentially fatal flaw—one that religion could help address. But what happens when religion also becomes preoccupied with equality?
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Markets, Catholicism, and Libertarianism
Supporting markets as the economic arrangements most likely to help promote human flourishing doesn’t necessarily mean you accept libertarian philosophical premises.
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How Christianity Created the Free Society
While many Christians have undermined human liberty, a new book of essays shows just how much of our contemporary freedom we owe to the Christian church, Christian thinkers, and Christian practice rather than liberals and liberalism.
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Regensburg, Ratzinger, and Our Crisis of Reason
Against the Age of Feelings, Joseph Ratzinger has consistently upheld the power of reason in all its fullness.
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George Washington’s Constitutional Morality
In the age of Clinton and Trump, we need the principles and ideals that animated America’s first president more than ever.
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Adam Smith, Economic Nationalism, and the Case for Free Trade
As economic nationalism enjoys a resurgence across the developed world, Adam Smith reminds us of how much we stand to lose—and not just economically.
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Global Capitalism versus Christianity? A Response to David Bentley Hart
Christianity has never seen the pursuit of virtue as incompatible with private possession of wealth.
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Constitutional Conservatism: Its Meaning and Its Future
The project of constitutional conservatism must be about more than restoring limits on government. It must also invoke the ends of the American experiment in ordered liberty if the United States is to resist the siren-calls of egalitarianism and populism.
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Sovereign Debt Crises, Justice, and State Authority
The significance of sovereign debt crises goes beyond economics. How we address these situations gives important insight into our understanding of the nature and limits of state authority.
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The Law of Benedict
Pope Benedict XVI often ventured into venues historically hostile to the Judeo-Christian tradition. A new collection of essays discusses many of these speeches, probing the relationship of reason to religion, the West, and natural law.
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Crony Capitalism: Inefficient, Unjust, and Corrupting
Cronyism in the marketplace not only damages the economy. It is also unjust and deeply corrupting of the body politic—perhaps especially of democracies.
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A Conservative’s Odyssey: Russell Kirk and Twentieth-Century American Conservatism
Bradley J. Birzer’s intellectual biography of the twentieth-century conservative thinker Russell Kirk highlights the complexities of the American conservative movement and its ongoing challenges.
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Christians, Capitalism, and Culture: A Response to David Bentley Hart
Instead of engaging in sweeping condemnations of contemporary capitalism, those concerned about the present state of Western culture should focus upon the theological and philosophical errors shaping our time.
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The End of Europe
Unless Europe is willing to affirm, defend, and promote its roots, it has no future beyond a dystopia of non-judgmentalism, managed decline, and increasing religiously inspired violence.
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The Case for Private Property: A (New) Natural Law Analysis
At a time when debates about economic inequality occupy significant attention in the public square, Adam MacLeod offers a fresh way forward for thinking about private property and its contribution to the common good by rooting property rights in a robust account of freedom and human flourishing.
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Conservatism, Free Markets, and America’s Post-Obama Economy
Instead of settling for damage control, now is the time for conservatives to outline a far-reaching pro-market economic reform agenda. Not only should conservatives explain how America’s economy can be changed in ways that promote lasting growth and wider prosperity, but they should also speak in moral terms, presenting a convincing normative alternative to progressivism’s social democratic vision.
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Public Debt, Political Paralysis, and the West
The West’s struggle with high public debt highlights the inertia and indecision of both governments and citizens in the face of difficult economic choices.
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God, Reason, and Our Civilizational Crisis
The way that a culture understands the nature of God shapes its conception of man, reason, and society. Though this presents enormous challenges for the Islamic world, it also has significant implications for the sustainability of Western civilization.
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Conservatism after Obama
Instead of simply reacting to modern liberalism’s advances, it’s time for conservatives to consider what their own fundamental transformation of America would look like.
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Poverty, the Rule of Law, and Human Flourishing
If we want to be coherent when addressing poverty, our concerns can’t be rooted in emotivist or relativistic accounts of who human beings are. They must be founded on recognition of each person’s freedom, rationality, and dignity.
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Conservatives, America, and Natural Law
For conservatives, a retreat into self-imposed isolation isn’t a responsible option. We need more conservatives publicly witnessing that humans are wired to know and freely choose truth, and that this has implications for the political order.
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Religious Liberty and Economic Freedom: Intellectual and Practical Paradoxes
The role of economic liberty in contributing to human flourishing and the common good remains deeply underappreciated, even by those who are dedicated to religious liberty.
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Just Money
If a society regards governmental manipulation of money as the antidote to economic challenges, a type of poison will work its way through the body politic, undermining justice and the common good.