The culture these days seems distinctly unfriendly to both freedom and virtue. For all of the rhetoric about the end of big government, the GOP Congress has made peace with Leviathan. At the same time, evidence of moral decline, from family disintegration to artistic obscenity, lies all around us. Superficially, at least, enhancing state power in order to make society more virtuous seems to be a losing strategy. Yet some conservatives, when not busy concocting new duties for government–to...

Lord Acton, the great historian of freedom, understood that “liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization.” The liberty of which he spoke embraced a broad scope of human freedom, including dimensions political, intellectual, economic, and, especially, religious. The civilization of which he spoke was the West, whose heritage of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian faith indelibly marked it and inexorably pushed it toward the full panoply of liberties we enjoy today and to which the rest...

During the summer of 1980, I met weekly for breakfast, prayer, and study with a minister friend of mine. A warm-hearted, intelligent man, Bob Hager kept challenging me to broaden my interest from the biblical studies, theology, and apologetics that were my great loves to include social concerns. One week, he told me of a book he’d read recently – Ronald J. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. “Cal,” Bob said, “you’ve simply got to read this...

Edmund Burke spoke a great and noble truth when he observed that the kind of society and government a nation has is an accurate reflection of the character and intellect of the people who inhabit it. A corrupt, careless, sluggish people will have a government to match their ill nature. A social order that contains a significant number of citizens of probity, intelligence, energy and imagination will be represented by statesmen like the fifty-five men who sat themselves down...

“Sin Taxes” are so called because they are levied on modities, such as tobacco and alcohol, which are the objects of widespread disapproval. “Such taxes,” Paul Samuelson says, “are often tolerated because most people–including many cigarette smokers and moderate drinkers–feel that there is something vaguely immoral about tobacco and alcohol. They think these ”sin taxes“ stun two birds with one stone: the state gets revenue, and vice is made more expensive.” “Sin Taxes” is not a technical term in...

If you take for granted your attendance at the church on the corner, it may be a good time to stop. You are about to be introduced to what many believe has e the worst threat to religious liberty in America: local zoning laws. In theory, zoning laws sound reasonable and those who back zoning regulations often have good intentions. However, the reality is that zoning controls are turning property rights, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of...

It is sometimes said that capitalism lacks poets. In twenty-five books and a career of lecturing and teaching all over the world, Michael Novak, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, had devoted much of his life to poetically explaining the crucial role of private initiative in public life. In doing so, he has roused the moral imaginations of scholars around the world. His service in defense of freedom has now been duly recognized. Mr. Novak has joined the...

In the marketplace, the consumer is “king.” To e wealthy in free enterprise usually involves mass production for mass material consumption. The free market rewards entrepreneurs for their correct anticipation of consumer demand. It showers people like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie with tremendous wealth, because they dramatically improved the consumer’s quality of life. Contrast this with socialist or pre-capitalist society. Those societies excel in producing an abundance of grinding poverty,...

The phone rang at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 5th. “Her heart gave up” was how a mutual friend announced Mia’s death. Marie Immaculée Antoinette Acton, later the Hon. Mrs. Douglas Woodruff, was dead at 89. I had seen her scarcely two weeks prior and knew that the end was near: “One can live too long, Jim,” she had said. Though she had often joked about the nuisance of what she described as her “creeping decrepitude,” there was a...

Up to recent times, the Catholic nations and regions were considered the poorest part of Christendom, “underdeveloped” not only financially but also materially. Lately, this has changed considerably, and today France and even Italy are economically stronger than predominantly Protestant countries such as Great Britain whose GNP they have overshadowed. In Europe, generally, industry is shifting its weight from the North to the South and East. Furthermore, the Institute for Sociology at the University of Chicago has made the...

During Mass one Sunday after the reading of the Gospel, I settled into the pew for the homily. I expected the usual treatment of the day’s readings and a passing reference to how we can apply the words of Scripture to our everyday lives. However, on this day, the homily would have a relevant meaning for individuals and churches throughout America. In his homily, the priest told of his first assignment after being ordained. He was to serve an...

When I was six or seven, growing up in Somerville, Massachusetts, my father took me into Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. As we progressed along the Trail, smelling the dust and exhaust fumes of old Boston, my father led me back into the eighteenth century. We strolled over the Common, and looked into Old South Church (the Tea Party started here, he pointed out), down to the Old State House (the Massacre happened in front of it), Fanueil...