This week’s Acton Commentary:

Healthcare reform – it’s one of those causes almost everyone favors, but which almost automatically produces sharp arguments when we ask what it means and how it might be realized. You would have had to be living in a cave for the past eight months to be unaware that Americans are deeply divided on this matter, and that the division runs clean through the middle of many communities. That includes Catholic America.

Of course, there are a small number of non-negotiables for Catholics, whatever their politics, when it comes to healthcare reform. These principally concern any provisions that facilitate or encourage the intentional termination of innocent human life, or which diminish existing conscience exemptions.

Without question, these are the primary issues for Catholics who take their Church’s teaching seriously when it comes to healthcare legislation. They dwarf everything else.

No matter how good the rest of the legislation might be in, for example, widening access to affordable healthcare, it is a stable principle of Catholic faith – and natural law – that you cannot do evil in order that good may come from it. St Paul insisted upon this almost 2000 years ago (Romans 3:8), and it is constantly affirmed by Scripture, Tradition, and centuries of magisterial teaching. Try as they may, no amount of rationalization by the usual suspects can get around this point.

For this reason, much of the Catholic contribution to the healthcare debate, especially that of Catholic bishops, has focused on these issues. We’ve yet to see what impact this might have on whatever eventually arrives on the floor of Congress.

But let’s hypothesize. Imagine the healthcare legislation submitted to Congress involved a massive expansion of government involvement in healthcare. Let’s also suppose that the same legislation was stripped of any provisions that violated non-negotiables for Catholics. Would Catholics be obliged to support passage of such legislation? Read more on Healthcare and Catholics: True and False Arguments…

In a new essay at The American, Jay Richards explains why capitalism isn’t based on greed.

In Acton’s first documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur, Richards along Rev. Robert Sirico, Sam Gregg, Michael Novak and others touch on this matter in making the moral case for the free economy.

Read more on Capitalism is Not Based on Greed…

My response to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson was published on National Review Online:

Unlike a certain other Nobel Prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel actually requires evidence of substantial achievement. Mere aspirations and lofty rhetoric count for nothing. This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics has been given to two economists, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, who have deepened our understanding of economic governance. More specifically, Ostrom and Williamson have shown how it is possible for firms and other communities to facilitate economic efficiency from “within.” In this sense, they follow in the footsteps of another Nobel laureate, Ronald Coase, whose groundbreaking 1937 article, “The Nature of the Firm,” did so much to establish the idea that businesses reduce transaction costs.

Read more on The Economics Nobel…

The Detroit News published my commentary on Catholics and health care reform in today’s newspaper. A slightly longer version of the article will appear in tomorrow’s Acton News & Commentary:

Catholic America is about as divided about health care reform as the rest of the country. But there are a small number of non-negotiables for Catholics that principally concern any provisions that facilitate or encourage the intentional termination of innocent human life or diminish existing conscience exemptions.

Read more on Catholics and Health Care…

Working as we do here at the intersection between economics and theology, the relationship between various kinds of classically liberal, libertarian, Austrian, and other economic modifiers and religion in general and Christianity in particular is in constant view. Sometimes the conversation is friendly, sometimes not so much. Sometimes the differences are less apparent, sometimes more.

Read more on What hath Vienna to do with Colorado Springs?…

In his book Elements of Justice (reviewed in the Journal of Markets & Morality here), University of Arizona philosophy and economics professor David Schmidtz introduces the idea of desert not simply as a compensatory notion, but also as including a promissory aspect. That is, what we deserve isn’t always about only what we have done. There might be a real sense in which what we do after an opportunity provides a kind of retroactive justification for having been given a chance.

Read more on Potential and the Peace Prize…

We’re happy to announce that the latest print issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality is available online.

The Spring 2009 issue includes a noteworthy study by Alan T. Y. Chan and Shu-kam Lee. In “Christ and Business Culture: Another Classification of Christians in Workplaces According to an Empirical Study in Hong Kong,” Chan and Lee outline four types of Christians at work: Christian soldiers, panic followers, strugglers, and Sunday Christians. Following the classification, Chan and Lee “develop a model of potential, evolutionary processes that these Christian types may follow using game-theory analysis” and conclude with “an empirical data set, which was conducted in Hong Kong, to illustrate our classifications and suggest potential strategies to efficiently allocate resources within Christian churches.”

Read more on Journal of Markets & Morality, Spring 2009…

The new issue of Religion & Liberty features an interview titled “Debating the Depression” with noted columnist and author Amity Shlaes. Shlaes does a superb job at reminding us about some of the consequences associated with massive government spending and regulation. First and foremost among these consequences is the burden of debt and taxes we are heaping upon future generations. This kind of expansion, without the means to pay for it, will sadly have a negative impact upon the quality of life of future Americans.

Read more on Religion & Liberty Interviews Amity Shlaes…

My article from this week’s Acton News & Commentary:

Soviet communism adopted Karl Marx’s teaching that religion was the “opiate of the masses” and launched a campaign of bloody religious persecution. Marx was misguided about the role of religion but years later many communists became aware that turning people away from religious life increases dependence on government to address life’s problems. The history of government coercion that comes from turning from religion to government makes a new study suggesting a national decline in religious life particularly alarming to those concerned about individual freedom.

The American Religious Identification Survey, published by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., reports that we should expect one in five Americans to identify themselves as having no religious commitments by 2030. The study, titled “American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population,” reports that Americans professing no religion, or Nones, have become more mainstream and similar to the general public in marital status, education, racial and ethnic makeup and income. The Nones have increased from 8.1 percent of the U.S. adult population in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.

According to the study, 22 percent of American 18 to 29-year-olds now self-identify as Nones. For those promoting dependency on government to handle the challenges of everyday life, as well as those who wish to take advantage of a growing market for morally bankrupt products and services, the news of declining religious life is welcome. Read more on Less Religion Means More Government…

I still haven’t quite gotten to a thorough fisking of “Exhibit B,” yet, and will have to be satisfied with arguing the following thesis in the meantime:

It is impossible to increase insurance coverage in America without increasing medical spending.

Read more on Impossible Promises on Health Care…