Values & Capitalism, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, has published a primer of sorts entitled, Economic Growth: Unleashing the Potential of Human Flourishing. The text is just over 100 pages, and gives the reader a thoughtful, concise and essential source on free market economics and its correlation to human flourishing and economic growth.

Read more on ‘Economic Growth: Unleashing the Potential of Human Flourishing’: Values & Capitalism Publication…

From the American Enterprise Institute: “It’s what makes America, America.”

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that every conservative should read—and heed:

Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints.

Read more on The Faulty Moral Arithmetic of the GOP…

American Enterprise Institute president and 2012 Acton University plenary speaker Arthur Brooks has a recent column in The Washington Post that lists five myths about free enterprise. Brooks’ five myths address some of free enterprise’s most common critiques and do so by giving free enterprise a moral aspect. The five points are especially relevant this election season, he says, because the two candidates represent such different fiscal perspectives.  Here’s a look a myth #2:

Read more on Arthur Brooks’ ‘5 Myths About Free Enterprise’…

This is a book review by Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse, president of the American Orthodox Institute. He blogs at AOI’s Observer. This review will appear in the forthcoming Spring 2012 Religion & Liberty. Sign up here for a free digital subscription to R&L.

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Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991. By Leon Aron (Yale University Press, June 2012). 496 pages

Review: The Second Russian Revolution (1987-1991)

Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse

“There are different ways to understand how revolutions work,” writes Leon Aron in his new book Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and the Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991 that chronicles the collapse of Soviet Communism during Glasnost from 1987-1991. The most dominant is structuralism, an approach that draws from Marxist thought and sees the state as the central actor in social revolutions. In the structuralist view revolutions are not made, they happen.

Aron explains that structuralism has some merit because of its chronological linearity. It can reveal the events that lead from point A to B to C; an important function because the historian’s first step is to grasp what actually happened. But structuralism also has a grave flaw: the materialist assumptions (“objective factors”) informing it are deaf to the “enormously subversive influence of ideas.” Read more on Review: The Second Russian Revolution (1987-1991)…

Prager University has a new course up and running. The lecturer? Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It as well as the recently published The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise. Brooks’ lecture, titled “Earning Happiness: The Moral Promise of Free Enterprise,” makes a case for the free market as the economic system most conducive to human welfare. In the lecture, Brooks says, “Free enterprise matters not just because of its unparalleled material benefits but because of its unparalleled moral benefits.”

Read more on Video: Arthur Brooks on ‘The Moral Promise of Free Enterprise’…

RJ Moeller of “Values and Capitalism,” an American Enterprise Institute initiative, recently hosted two Acton Institute staffers on his podcast, The RJ Moeller Show. First, president and co-founder kicks off the segment with a self-introduction and a discussion of his new book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy. Later, Acton Research Fellow Jordan Ballor closes out the segment with a testimony to his own work and that of the Acton Institute. The segment can be heard in the player below:

Read more on Rev. Robert Sirico and Jordan Ballor on The RJ Moeller Show…

Now that our friend Eric Teetsel is moving over to the Colson Center, AEI’s Values and Capitalism project is looking for a new program manager. You can find more about the job here. Also, PowerBlog readers will be interested in V&C’s excellent blog. Check it out.

Read more on Values and Capitalism is Now Hiring…

Roger Scruton has written an excellent piece on the moral basis of free markets; it’s up at MercatorNet. He begins with the Islamic proscriptions of interest charged, insurance, and other trade in unreal things:

Read more on Roger Scruton: No Escaping Morality in Economics…

AEI President Arthur Brooks answers the question from MSNBC’s Matt Miller, “What do we do when huge forces beyond our control shape our destiny?”

Read more on Video: AEI’s Brooks on the Free Enterprise Debate…