Year: 2013

July 17, 2013

God or Gov: Loving Father or Monster Tyrant?

Fr. Benjamin Sember, a Catholic priest, has written a superb piece on the dangers of making the government one’s God: When a society has made the decision to live without God, that society inevitably begins to rely on the Government to do everything that God used to do: to declare what is right and what is wrong, to protect the innocent and punish the guilty, divide the wheat from the chaff and throw the evildoers into maximum security prison, to protect and care for orphans and the widows, to give healing to the sick, and to guarantee stability, security, prosperity, and peace. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

Obamacare: A Pathway From Work To Welfare?

If the National Bureau of Economic Research is to be believed, Obamacare stands to cause more than 1 million Americans to shift from work to welfare. Why? America will lose an abundance of low-paying full-time jobs to relieve employers of health-care cost burdens. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

Jonathan Witt: ‘Memo to Tinseltown’

The newly released movies, Lone Ranger and Iron Man 3 both feature an evil capitalist as the villain. Writing at The American Spectator, Jonathan Witt addresses this common practice in Hollywood: This media stereotype is so persistent, so one-sided, and so misleading that an extended definition of capitalism is in order. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

Smart Drugs: When Performance Rules

When a culture values individualism as a virtue, it sends a message to young people that what really matters in life is your performance. To make matters worse, this performance pressure is coupled with the idea that unless you are on top, you just don’t matter. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

What Public Schools Should Learn from Homeschool Economics

“Public education is the fount of most problems in the United States, not simply based on content, but also on structure,” says Thomas Purifoy. “Simply put: it is economically impossible for American public education to be successful in the long-run (or the short-run, for that matter).” Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

The Roots of Enduring Cultural Change

Over at Christianity Today, Andy Crouch confronts modern society’s increasing skepticism toward institutional structures, arguing that without them, all of our striving toward cultural transformation is bound to falter: For cultural change to grow and persist, it has to be institutionalized, meaning it must become part of the fabric of human life through a set of learnable and repeatable patterns. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2013

The Tithe and Cheerful Giving

The folks at RELEVANT magazine wonder, “What would happen if the church tithed?” The piece explores in some depth the point that tithing is really about the radical call to Christian generosity, pointing to the biblical example of the Macedonian church: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Continue Reading...
July 15, 2013

‘News’ Makes Us Dumber

Constantly in search of a sensational story, the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst once sent a telegram to a leading astronomer that read: “Is there life on Mars? Please cable 1,000 words.” Continue Reading...