Latest Posts

February 11, 2019

A rule of thumb for the Green New Deal

I have a couple rules of thumb that I hope help me cut through some of the noise around various policy proposals and political debates. One has to do with budgetary reform (a topic I covered at some length last week): If the plan doesn’t engage with entitlements, then it isn’t really a serious proposal. Continue Reading...
February 08, 2019

The libertine road to serfdom

The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why The Church Was Right All Along. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. TAN Books, 2018. 406 pages. Reviewed by Rev. Ben Johnson Keen-eyed analysts have probed every ideological trend threatening liberty – from socialism and fascism to the Alt-Right – with one glaring exception: the revolt against personal responsibility. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is the same old socialist hooey

Official Washington is all atwitter today over the release of the “Green New Deal” by New York freshman Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, also a Democrat. The proposal bundles many long-desired goals of the environmentalist movement into a neat legislative package, described by left-leaning Vox in this way: The resolution consists of a preamble, five goals, 14 projects, and 15 requirements. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2019

Cronyism and conservatives

A major problem with America’s economy is what’s often called “crony capitalism” or simply “cronyism.” In other places, I’ve defined cronyism as the situation in which free markets are hollowed out and replaced by political markets. Continue Reading...
February 07, 2019

A world of economic miracles: The power of human cooperation

Surrounded by economic abundance, it can be easy to be distracted by what we see—products, tools, technology, resources—and assume our newfound prosperity stems from material causes. In turn, given the stability of many institutions and the increasing pace of innovation, continuous economic progress now seems somewhat inevitable. Continue Reading...