The new health care law has endangered longstanding protections on conscience. We must act to address them or risk creating a dangerous precedent.
Pillar: Business & Economics
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.
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Health Care, Abortion, and the Call of Conscience
Under the new health-care law, pro-lifers may have to accept inferior health plans, rather than wrongly pay into abortion providing ones.
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Fatal Attraction: Democracy and the Welfare State
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.
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Europe’s Monetary Sins
The bailout of Greece is a stunning about-face that calls into question Europe’s commitment to a stable currency.
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Health Care and the Abandonment of Pro-Life Principle
In a first-time feature, the editors of Public Discourse respond to the editors of Commonweal.
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Health Care Reform, Progressivism and ‘Making History’
The claim that health care reform “made history” highlights how fully the political debate hinges on ideas of progress.
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Beyond Sovereignty: Money and its Future
Is it time to consider internationalizing or privatizing our money supply?
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Debt and the Current Crisis
As we attempt to revive the global financial system, it may be time to reconsider the long tradition that warned against the dangers of borrowing.
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What the Health-Care Debate Is Really All About
The choice the country faces in health-care reform is a stark one with profound ramifications: What process will best deliver affordable quality health-care to all Americans, a government-driven or market-driven one?
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Policing the Global Financial Hit Squad
In the wake of the financial crisis, market reform will require moral reform.
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Regulation through Reputation
Attempts to regulate corporate misbehavior need to find a better instrument than intrusive regulations.
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Duty and Disability
Having spent 20 years wrongly diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state, Rom Houben reminds us that disabled persons are capable of many more substantive opportunities for human fulfillment than we are initially inclined to believe. But is bodily life just as such worth preserving? Can care-givers rightly remove hydration and nutrition?
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Do We Have a Right to Equal Health Care?
Calls for health-care reform confuse the basic right to healthcare and a desire for healthcare that is in all ways equal.
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The Financial Crisis and the Challenge of Natural Law
Is the current financial crisis simply a technical failure, or does it derive from some more basic problem? Economists may need to begin addressing fundamental questions concerned with value, and for that, they may turn to the natural law tradition.
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Economic Liberalism and its Discontents
If we are to restore confidence in free markets, we need a robust explanation of their moral value.
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The Post-Nuclear Family
It is no simple matter to care for aging parents. But in the face of an uncertain future, concrete steps can be taken to make an unusual option more attractive.
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The Real Health-Care Debate
The real health-care debate isn’t whether we should have reform, but which type of reform to pursue: good reform versus bad reform. A senior economist explains how we can make high quality health-care available to all.
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Free Trade, Utility, and the Good
Economists and other social scientists should take into account the integral flourishing of human beings and not just material utility. After doing so, defense of free trade becomes more—not less—important.
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The Limits of Free Trade
Free trade brings with it financial benefits and human rewards. However, it sometimes must be limited if communities and people are to flourish.
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Health Care Reform and the Public Option in Theory and Practice
Those who favor providing health care to all shouldn’t necessarily oppose the “public option,” but they will be unable to support a bill if it endorses and entrenches the taking of innocent human life through abortion.
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Constitutional Questions About Health Care Reform
Debates over health care reform have focused almost exclusively on policy. Few have considered whether Congress even has the constitutional authority to enact its proposed reforms. Fundamental constitutional issues—such as the scope of the commerce power, the right of individuals to religious liberty, and the different natures of federal and state authority—must be recalled in order to have a more fruitful debate.
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Free Trade as Prosperity, Free Trade as Human Right
Free trade is not only good economic policy, it is a human right that should not be restricted lightly.
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Guiding Principles for the Health Care Debate
Pragmatic concerns (and angry accusations) have dominated the health care debate to date. But what are the principles that should guide efforts for reform?
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Rethinking Economics in the Post-Crisis World
In the wake of the financial crisis, we need an economics with greater humility about its predictive power and an increased understanding of the complicated human beings who, when the discipline is rightly understood, lie at its center.
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Whither Central Banking?
At a moment of increased government involvement in the economy, the solution we need might be a more independent central bank.