Intellectuals

April 16, 2019

How Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ misunderstands Christian liberalism

Rod Dreher is once again exasperated. He is frustrated by a rumor that George Weigel hasn’t bought the tireless promotion of his ‘Benedict Option’: A few months ago, Weigel appeared at an event in Providence, RI, to discuss the Benedict Option. Continue Reading...

April 02, 2019

Kevin D. Williamson responds to ‘Ben Shapiro and the alt-right smear’

In my Friday post titled, “Ben Shapiro and the alt-right smear” I wrote: Thus, National Review – once a bulwark of American conservatism – advocates that gay marriage is a family value – according to Jonah Goldberg – and that statues of former Confederate leadership must be torn down by patriotism – according to Kevin Williamson. Continue Reading...

April 02, 2019

Grace in our life together: Community beyond markets, states, and ‘social capital’

When discussing the role of economics in our life and world I am always careful to make a distinction: life is economic but economics is not all of life. I’ve suggested this broader understanding of personal and social interests has been common among major free-market theorists since Adam Smith. Continue Reading...

March 29, 2019

Ben Shapiro and the alt-right smear

Misunderstanding the alt-right seems to be the favorite activity of the established media. In the latest case, the favorite magazine of globalists – the English magazine The Economist – has characterized Ben Shapiro as the sage of the alt-right. Continue Reading...

March 11, 2019

Socialists cannot divorce good intentions from sound economics

Corey Robin has contributed an interesting essay to the Boston Review’s forum ‘Economics After Neoliberalism’. I am reluctant to enter into debates on, “Neoliberalism”, a term so nebulous and variegated in its usage as to render it useless as anything other than an all-purpose cudgel with which to browbeat others in middlebrow magazines (See Phil Magness on its pejorative origins). Continue Reading...

March 04, 2019

How to talk and listen towards a free and virtuous society

Reading Dylan Pahman’s recent piece, Don’t write off young ‘socialists’, got me thinking about talking and listening. We all talk and listen, with varying degrees of success, every day. Most of the time I do each well enough to muddle through learning something from others while imparting some sliver of wisdom in between boisterous declarations of my opinions and preferences. Continue Reading...

February 26, 2019

Lessons from Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ in economics and life

When I first read Walden I was in the woods. In the Kitchel Lindquist Dunes Preserve to be precise which is also where I first read The Idiot and, amusingly, Dune. Continue Reading...

February 21, 2019

Pope Francis pardons Marxist priest in Nicaragua: Has the Sandinista priest changed his stripes?

Having visited Nicaragua just prior to and immediately following the elections which initially ousted the Sandinistas from power in 1990, I was struck by the news this week from Rome. Evidently sometime in the last few weeks, when exactly remains unclear, Pope Francis lifted the canonical penalties imposed by Pope St. Continue Reading...

February 13, 2019

The Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, a precursor in the defense of religion and liberty

Today marks 13 years since the passing of the Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, pastor, author, and great supporter of the Acton Institute’s mission. On February 1, 1999, Rev. Opitz sent a letter to Leonard P. Continue Reading...

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