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Pillar

Business & Economics

The fifth pillar, business and economics, is built upon concern for the common good and the ways in which the economic order contributes to—or detracts from—human flourishing. Public Discourse examines the ways in which the market is shaped by—and gives shape to—our understanding of the human person, the role of the family, the rule of law, and education and culture.

The Right and the Future of Capitalism: Part 1

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Public Discourse

Constitutions, Culture, and the Economy

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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.
Public Discourse

Inequality and Elite Failure

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Is inequality the cause of our worst social ills?
Public Discourse

Poverty, Abortion, and Budgets: Democrats for Life Need Better Arguments

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A recent address encouraging Democrats for Life to re-elect President Obama is marked by flawed reasoning and misleading statistics.
Public Discourse

Metaphysical Business

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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.
Public Discourse

The Power to Destroy

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The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act is constitutionally correct. This doesn’t prevent us from seeing the individual mandate as a tax on freedom—an exercise of Congress’s constitutional power to tax so as to destroy personal and institutional freedom with respect to health insurance.
Public Discourse

The Economic Crisis and Europe’s Rule of Law Problem

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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.
Public Discourse

Here’s Twenty Bucks: Don’t Have Babies

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Melinda Gates and the Family Planning Summit will waste 4.6 billion dollars on contraception for women in third world countries instead of addressing the educational and healthcare-related challenges pregnant mothers face.
Public Discourse

Will the Obamacare “Tax” Trump Religious Liberty?

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Though the Supreme Court has long been hostile to tax exemptions for religious reasons, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Establishment Clause should give religious organizations reasons to hope that they won’t be penalized by the Obamacare “tax.”
Public Discourse

In Defense of John Roberts

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The Supreme Court should be an apolitical institution dedicated to enforcing the minimal and clear requirements of the Constitution.
Public Discourse

Franciscan, Ave Maria, and Obamacare

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Two Catholic universities’ decisions to drop student health-care plans show Obamacare’s long-term goal: Force Americans to choose government-subsidized plans over no insurance at all.
Public Discourse

Libertarianism, Conservatism, and Egalitarianism

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

Rediscovering Property

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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.
Public Discourse

The Occupy Movement’s Vacuous Critique of Inequality

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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.
Public Discourse

Libertarianism: Not So Wrong, After All! A Reply to Nathan Schlueter

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

The Libertarian Double-Face and the Case for Conservatism: A Reply to Wenzel

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

Pepsi, Proxies, and Pro-Life Respect for the Rule of (Corporate) Law

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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.
Public Discourse

The Costs of Contraception

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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.
Public Discourse

Conservatism or Liberty?

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

Why I am Not a Libertarian

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

When Being Pro-Life Isn’t Enough to Stop Abortion

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The challenge in preventing abortion of Down syndrome fetuses is not convincing mothers that their child is a human being with a right to life, but of assuring expectant mothers there will be support for their children after they are born.
Public Discourse

The Bishops and the Mandate: Principled Witness vs. Politics as Usual

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The controversy over the HHS mandate is not a spat about wonkish detail or tribal privilege. It remains a struggle for the principle of religious freedom, the soul of civil society.
Public Discourse

The HHS Mandate, Cooperation with Evil, and Coercion

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The fundamental problem with the mandate is that it coerces some people into doing what they think is wrong, and this problem remains regardless of whether the coercion excuses the actions of the people being coerced.
Public Discourse

Obama’s Contraception Cram-down: The Pork Precedent

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An ancient example of resistance to a tyrant’s attempt to coerce violations of religious conscience provides an interesting perspective on resistance to the Obama administration’s recent healthcare coverage mandate.
Public Discourse

Conservative Poverty Fighting

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