Washington, D.C., has long been a focal point of debates about vouchers and other forms of school choice–partly because the public schools there are so notoriously bad that a working majority of politicians and parents are open to experiments that might improve them. Two recent articles highlight interesting developments. First, Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal challenges President Obama to fight congressional action that might terminate the D.C. scholarship program (which currently permits some students to attend private schools...

The Making Men Moral conference at Union University is over, but there are some takeaways. This was a unique engagement of many natural law thinkers such as the Catholics Robert George and Francis Beckwith with Southern Baptists like Russell Moore and Greg Thornbury. In that connection, Russell Moore delivered a message that I think would be considered a highlight of the conference by anyone who attended. He addressed the differences between Catholics and Evangelicals irenically without being ecumenical in any...

Maurice Black and Erin O’Connor, research fellows at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, write in “Illiterates,” a column in Newsday, that “younger Americans are deplorably uninformed about economic and financial matters.” They observe that “students who do not understand money e adults who are financially irresponsible.” And, of course, they e adults who are not equipped to understand broader economic issues involving government, such as taxation, debt and spending. From the column: Some colleges and universities offer programs...

As Dave Ramsey admits, all of the advice he gives is something that you would be able to get from your grandma. It’s a mentary on our society that this basic wisdom, that prudential use of money (i.e. thrift) is a virtue, is so alien to us. ...

I’ll save you the suspense. No. Linker, known primarily for betraying Richard John Neuhaus by serving as editor of First Things and then publishing a book accusing Neuhaus of scurrilous theocratic aims, now writes at the New Republic. In a recent post there, he brilliantly claims to have demonstrated the idea of natural law is obvious poppycock. Why? Because he disagrees with two officials of the Catholic Church holding that a nine year old who was raped and with her...

Free trade seems to get all the blame when things go wrong and none of the credit when things go right. It’s the Rodney Dangerfield of global economics: it gets no respect. Certainly in this worldwide economic downturn globalism is going to take its bumps and bruises. And as trouble es to roost at home (and vice versa) more then ever the lesson is going to be how truly interdependent we all are. In the short term there will certainly...

Gina over at The Point links to a piece by Jennifer at Conversation Diary, which reads in part, …I got out a pen to add some things to the store list. I do this about five times every day. But this time, as I wrote “bread” and “black beans” on my little pad of paper, it hit me: I am doing something really, really amazing here. Out of the blue, I suddenly saw writing items on my grocery list in...

Somewhere in the United States today, government officials are writing a plan that will profoundly affect other people’s lives, es, and property. Though it may be written with the best intentions, the plan will go horribly wrong. The costs will be far higher than anticipated, the benefits will prove far smaller, and various unintended consequences will turn out to be worse than even the plan’s critics predicted. That’s the first paragraph of Randal O’Toole’s wonderful book, The Best Laid Plans:...

Today on the Acton website we launched a resource page devoted to the global economic crisis. This page is a collection of recent Acton articles, interviews, and video that directly relates to the economic crisis. It includes material that addresses the causes of the crisis, the government’s responses, and market-based solutions to the crisis. It also has a link to a superb video in which Sam Gregg discusses the government’s response to the crisis and how its policies, such as...

I have a piece up today at the First Things website on conservative Protestants (like me) and their attitude toward corporate behavior. Here’s a clip: Experience and prudence have demonstrated that free markets are demonstrably better than other alternatives. But the problem is that we have tuned our antennae in such a way such that they pick up market problems like the promotion of hedonistic vice but do not take adequate notice of other wrongs. Thus, conservative evangelicals are quick...