Some of Goodman’s and Musgrave’s premises seemed to be self-evident, although they are not usually included in the discussion of health care. For example, they reminded us that, in a market system, the pursuit of self-interest is usually consistent with social goals. With that statement considered, some of their other conclusions e a lot clearer: We cannot solve America’s health care crisis if 250 million Americans find it in their self-interest to act in ways that make the crisis...

The essence of what Jennings has extracted from Wesley is that the Christian ethic revolves entirely around providing for the poor. Moreover, the “rich” who do this are not just people living in great plenty but also those who have attained only sufficient shelter, food, and clothing to sustain life at a reasonable level fort–in other words, anyone in the lower middle class. Even reaching this modest level of prosperity, one runs the risk of falling into spiritual pride;...

Several years ago the Philadelphia Inquirer published an editorial outlining the absence of moral direction in the public forum as a consequence of the current understanding of the separation of church and state. The author argued that it is as though the embrace of any moral standards implies the adoption of certain religious tenets or the dogma of a particular church. The Founding Fathers were, of course, decidedly religious men; and it was precisely their desire to protect the...

The book jacket on Capitalism and Christians, the newest dispatch by Arthur Jones, assures us that this editor-at-large of the National Catholic Reporter is “an economist by training.” That fact makes the pervasive and remarkable confusions in this book all the more depressing. Jones seeks to define the relationship between capitalism and Christianity but begins with an unfair description of capitalism. It is a system, he says, in which finding “new ways of making a buck” quickly “conditions the...

This dynamic is and always has been present in jury trials, and every trial lawyer knows it. Jury trials are ultimately a contest between truth and rhetoric, in which rhetoric often has the advantage. The validity of any jury trial system depends, then, on its ability to develop and implement evidentiary rules that neutralize this advantage, i.e., that gives truth an even chance against flimflam. In his book Galileo’s Revenge, Peter W. Huber presents us pelling evidence that the...

Johnson presents a daunting tome of some one thousand pages filled with an interdisciplinary approach that views history as a whole, involving the interface between painters (Turner), musicians (Beethoven), scientists (Lyell), and ordinary people. This emphasis upon social history, avoiding the tendency of past historians to overemphasize political events, mon among contemporary historians. But, unlike many, Johnson does not bore the reader with mundane facts about plumbing contracts in nineteenth-century France, nor does he have a hidden socialist agenda...

Humberto Belli is a Nicaraguan, the former editorial page editor of La Prensa, who, after a number of years in exile, returned to his homeland to help rebuild what the Sandinistas laid to waste. He currently serves as the Minister of Education, and is an enthusiastic Roman Catholic. He taught sociology at the University of Steubenville, and is the founder of the Puebla Institute, a center munication about the situation of the church in Latin America. Dr. Ronald Nash...

David Noebel ambitiously defends the biblical Christian worldview as “the one worldview based on truth” as he examines its chief rivals: Marxism/Leninism and secular humanism. In doing so, he underscores several significant points: First, beliefs matter. They are not simply “preferences.” A battle of ideas is a e advance beyond the anti-intellectualism of early fundamentalism, warm-hearted pietism, and lazy relativism. Second, beliefs have contexts and consequences. Noebel presents beliefs in the contexts prehensive worldviews, analyzing their implications for a...

The book, Love and Profit: the Art of Caring Leadership by James A. Autry, arrived within a few days. Inside the fly cover was ment by John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, authors of Megatrends 2000. “The most caring (loving) book about management we have ever read. A real breakthrough. We predict it will e a classic.” “Wow! That’s pretty heavy stuff,” I thought. Can any book on management live up to that statement? I had my doubts … After...

Schoeck defines envy as “a drive which lies at the core of man’s life as a social being…[an] urge pare oneself invidiously with others.” Denying the egalitarian dogma that envy is spawned by circumstance and can be cured by removing socioeconomic inequalities, he maintains, less flatteringly but far more believably, that envy is inherent in our nature, citing pelling evidence as sibling rivalry among small children. Envy is not wholly negative; Schoeck plausibly argues that social forces could not...

The environment is increasingly ing a religious issue, as a host of environmental advocates attempt to “green” the church. More than a dozen volumes have been issued over the past two years alone, and new books seem to pour forth almost every day. Among the odder contributions—at least to anyone who believes in orthodox Christianity—are After Nature's Revolt and From Apocalypse to Genesis, both from Fortress Press. The underlying premise of all of these eco-theological books is that we...

The title of John Gray’s book could mislead some readers in the United States of America since “liberal” in England and Europe means the more or less coherent school of political thought wherein what is most important is the freedom of persons to govern themselves (as distinct from being governed by other persons). Government is established in societies to protect the right to this freedom. It is this negative right to liberty that the liberalisms of Gray’s book focus...