Visiting San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in 1968, Tom Wolfe was struck by the way hippies there “sought nothing less than to sweep aside all codes and restraints of the past and start out from zero.” In his essay “The Great Relearning,” Wolfe connects this to Ken Kesey’s pilgrimage to Stonehenge, inspired by “the idea of returning to civilization’s point zero” and trying to start all over from scratch and do it better. Wolfe predicted that history will record that Haight-Ashbury period as “one of the most extraordinary religious experiments of all time.”

Read more on Back to Civilization’s Point Zero?…

In a web exclusive preview to the latest issue of Renewing Minds, a new journal of Christian thought from Union University, Jordan Ballor considers the future of free enterprise:

That the United States has been blessed with great prosperity is beyond argument. Even critics of the American system of government and economy admit that the system of free enterprise has been unmatched in its ability to generate wealth. As Hunter Baker notes, this reality has occasioned a shift in the polemic against free enterprise. Pointing to John Kenneth Galbraith’s argument in The Affluent Society, which “implicitly conceded that earlier critics of the free economy had been wrong in their repeated assertions that competitive capitalism failed to yield broad benefits to the public,” Baker observes that “critics of the free market now argue more on the basis of inequality and relative deprivation instead of on the basis of absolute deprivation.”

Read more on The Future of Free Enterprise…

While its depressing that not being forced to violate one’s conscience is considered a victory, you take what you can get in the age of ObamaCare. So I’m thankful for the news that an appeals court imposed a temporary injunction against the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing its contraception mandate on a privately owned business:

Read more on Another (Temporary) Advance for Religious Liberty…

On Wednesday, Acton’s President Rev. Robert Sirico was interviewed by the Rome bureau of Catholic News Service regarding the work of the Acton Institute.

The Catholic News Service interview “Is Capitalism Catholic?” showcases the mission and influence which the Acton Institute has had on religious leaders’ socio-economic perspectives over its 22 years, including a clip from a meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops in which the Institute’s work on free market economics was both welcomed and criticized.

Read more on Video: Is Capitalism Catholic?…

In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll on methods to avoid the “fiscal cliff”, sixty percent of Americans support raising taxes on incomes more than $250,000 a year (73 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents, and 39 percent of Republicans).

But how much will that affect the deficit?

The federal budget deficit in 2012 was $1.1 trillion. But a number with that many zeros—$1,100,000,000,000—is difficult to grasp, so let’s put it in some perspective

This is what $100 million (0.0001 trillion) looks like.

Read more on Why Soaking the Rich Won’t Fix the Deficit…

The Pope, on Twitter
Jeff Geerling, Open Source

Apparently, on December 3, the Holy See Press Office will hold a press conference announcing the Pope’s official entry into the Twitterverse.

The High Price of Establishment
Wesley J. Smith, First Things

Read more on PowerLinks – 11.30.12…

Is spartan austerity driving us over the fiscal cliff?

The latest step in the budget dance between House Republicans and the White House has to do with where tax increases (or revenue increases in general, depending on what is called what) fit with a deal to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff.” As Napp Nazworth reports, President Obama has apparently delivered an ultimatum: “there would be no agreement to avert the ‘fiscal cliff’ unless tax rates are increased on those making more than $250,000 per year.”

On one level it seems reasonable to talk about addressing a deficit from both directions: cutting spending and raising revenue. But as Ray Nothstine put it so well earlier this week, without some structural (and cultural) changes to the way Congress works, it would be insane to think that giving politicians more money is going to change how they spend it. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Historically “politicians spend the money as fast as it comes in – and a little bit more.” Without some kind of balanced budget agreement, something with real teeth, why should we think things will be any different this time around? (I’ve talked about a more promising “both/and” budget solution before.) As Ray and I have concluded elsewhere, “In the case of the federal spending, the government has proved to be untrustworthy with very much. It’s time to see if the politicians in Washington can learn to be trustworthy with less.”
Read more on Spartan Austerity and the Fiscal Cliff…

Below is an excerpt from a 1925 Washington Post editorial on President Calvin Coolidge’s Inaugural Address. The comments speak directly to the moral arguments Coolidge was making for a free economy. It is the kind of moral thinking about markets and taxes we desperately need today from our national leaders.

Read more on Calvin Coolidge, Excessive Taxation, and the Moral Economy…

According to AEI author Mark Perry, there is another education-related “bubble” to worry about: the textbook bubble. He writes that this textbook bubble “continues to inflate at rates that make the U.S. housing bubble seem relatively inconsequential by comparison.” He continues, “The cost of college textbooks has been rising at almost twice the rate of general CPI inflation for at least the last thirty years.” Given that many students use loan money to purchase books as well as pay for classes, we might think of this as one of the many sources pumping air into the student debt bubble. But what choice do students (or professors, for that matter) have than to surrender to the textbook “cartel,” as Perry characterizes it? This bubble popping, while a bad thing for the textbook bubble-boys committed to the old, cartel-style model, could be a small relief and contribute to slowing the growth rate of the student debt bubble. Read more on Textbook Bubble-Boys…

Ann Schneible, who interviewed Rev. Robert A. Sirico for Vatican Radio today (see PowerBlog post for audio) also published an interview with the Acton Institute president and co-founder on the Catholic news site, Zenit. Excerpt:

Read more on Interview: Rev. Sirico on ‘A Moral Case for a Free Economy’…