The Alleged Pro-Business Bias of the Supreme Court… Sigh…
Stephen Richer, Forbes

Things that happen almost every October: A new Supreme Court term starts, and liberal pundits raise the specter of “The Unjustly Pro-Business Supreme Court.”

Read more on PowerLinks – 10.23.12…

Perhaps I’m exceptionally naive, but it always surprises me when colleges and universities—the supposed bastions of tolerance in secular society—refuse to accept people or groups whose views do not align with their own administrators. The latest example comes from Tufts University:

Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF) has lost its official recognition as a Tufts Community Union (TCU) student group over alleged discriminatory clauses in the group’s constitutional requirements for its leaders.

TCF leadership says the group plans to appeal the decision.

The group’s Vision and Planning Team (VPT) failed to make revisions to their governing document that would bring it in line with the TCU Constitution’s non-discriminatory clause, Judiciary Chair Adam Sax, a senior, said.

As an unrecognized group, TCF will lose the right to use the Tufts name in its title or at any activities, schedule events or reserve university space through the Office for Campus Life and request and receive funding allocated by the TCU Treasury, Sax said.

TCF is the Tufts chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, an evangelical Christian mission on college campuses across the country, and also has ties to the university Chaplaincy.

The group had been operating in a state of suspended recognition after the Judiciary found that the group’s constitution excluded students from applying to leadership positions based on their beliefs. The clauses in question require that any TCF member who wishes to apply for a leadership role must adhere to a series of tenets called a Basis of Faith, or eight “basic Biblical truths of Christianity.”

The Judiciary last month recommended that TCF move the belief-based leadership requirements from the constitution’s bylaws, which are legally binding, to its mission statement, which is not.

Here are the eight exclusionary tenets that Tufts administration finds to be unacceptable:
Read more on The New Tolerance at Tufts…

Recently at Big Questions Online, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead answers the question, “Does a culture of thrift cultivate generosity?” with a solid yes, documenting the history of thrift and generosity in the United States and their subsequent and unfortunate decline in recent years:

Read more on On Thrift and Generosity…

At some point in tonight’s foreign policy debate between the two presidential candidates, Governor Mitt Romney should send his very capable inner wonk on a long coffee break and press a big-picture truth that otherwise will go begging: America’s strength on the international stage requires economic strength, and our economic strength cannot long endure under the weight of a government so swollen in size that it stifles human enterprise.

The connection between economic freedom and economic growth is well-established. The connection between the relative strength of a nation’s economy and its strength on the international stage is also well established.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but it’s maybe easiest to grasp by thinking about technology. Our strength rests partly on our position as a technology leader, which allows our military to do more with less. But we’re unlikely to maintain that position of leadership if our government habitually suffocates our high-tech entrepreneurs under high taxes and hyper-regulation.
Read more on Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate: ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’…

Morality and Markets: The Humane Balance
Ralph E. Ancil, The Imaginative Conservative

To protect the market system against these destructive abuses, a commitment to permanent values is required by market participants, both consumers and producers, and to what German economist Wilhelm Roepke called a “terror regime of decency” as well as to a public policy rooted in that decency.

Read more on PowerLinks – 10.22.12…

Is the “secular vs. sacred” worldview struggle just another first-world problem? Join us in a discussion of this topic in the AU Online series Freedom and Virtue in the Developed World. The first lecture of this AU Online series will be held on Tuesday October 23 at 6:30pm EDT. Don’t miss your chance to explore this important topic!

Read more on Last Chance to Register!…

This week I wrote about the dignity of paying taxes (among other ways of contributing to social flourishing). But as we know, not all taxes are created equal. Indeed, as Antony Davies and James Harrigan write this week at US News, “Politicians are in the business of buying votes with tax breaks and sweetheart deals for their preferred constituencies, and they have to offset these deals by taxing disfavored constituencies at increased rates. The longer this game is played, the more convoluted the tax code becomes.”

As I argued previously at Capital Commentary, this amounts to a kind of back door social engineering (as well as playing favorites, picking winners, and so on). The fundamental purpose of taxation is not to buy votes and give preference to lobbies and special constituencies. Instead, as I write, “The point of taxation is to raise funds to enable the government to fulfill its moral, political, and social responsibilities.” Such a view is ultimately at odds with a Utilitarian theory, which considers taxation to be a tool rather used “to maximize overall well-being in society.” Matthew Weinzierl argues for greater attention to a theory of Equal Sacrifice, which on Weinzierl’s account “assumes individuals have the first claim to their output, and that they voluntarily agree to form societies that collect taxes in order to purchase public goods.”
Read more on Sixpence to the Good (of Government)…

George Weigel on why Americans respond positively to presidential aspirants who lift up “a vision of American possibility—prosperity linked to creativity, responsibility, and generosity”:

A robust economy is not only an economic imperative; it is a moral and cultural imperative. A robust economy makes honorable work possible for all who wish to be responsible for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. And work, according to Blessed John Paul II in the 1983 encyclical Laborem Exercens, is an expression of our participation in God’s sustaining “creation” of the world.

Read more on Economy and Empowerment…

Working Paper: “The Eurozone Debt Crisis — The Options Now”
Buchheit, Lee C. and Gulati, G. Mitu
SSRN Working Papers, October 8, 2012

The Eurozone debt crisis is entering its third year. The original objective of the official sector’s response to the crisis — containment — has failed. All of the countries of peripheral Europe are now in play; three of them (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) operate under full official sector bailout programs.

Read more on ResearchLinks – 10.19.12…

State-by-state advocacy of U.S. religious liberty launches
Anne Reiner, Baptist Press

Representatives from nine state legislatures have announced the formation of state-level religious freedom caucuses in a new nationwide effort to combat religious discrimination.

Read more on PowerLinks – 10.19.12…