Imagine this: a teacher tells her high school students that they are going to enjoy a chocolate cake, while learning about food distribution and economics. (As a former high school teacher, I assure you, most of the students heard nothing past the word, “cake”.) The teacher then divides the students into three groups. In her class of 30 students, one group is made up of 4 students, a second group is 10 students and the third group is 16. The...

R.R. Reno at First Things has written a moving meditation on the preferential option for the poor: “In the Gospel of Matthew we find Jesus warning us about how our lives will be judged. His words are pointed. We are to feed the hungry, e the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner. For what we do to the poor and the destitute—“the least of these my brethren,” says Jesus—we do to the Lord himself. It’s a sobering warning,...

Jeffery C. Pugh has landed every blogger’s dream: the book deal for a best-of collection of his musings. Devil’s Ink: Blog from the Basement Office is an answer to the question “What if Satan kept a blog?”—one of several (the opportunity to pun is apparently irresistible) all of which immediately parison with C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Pugh anticipates parison in his book’s preface, saying he offers “another way of looking at evil,” a modern way that reflects how the...

Ben Shapiro was at the Heritage Foundation recently to talk about his new book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. Publisher HarperCollins describes the book as “the inside story of how the most powerful medium of munication in human history has e a propaganda tool for the Left.” Shapiro made the point at Heritage (see the video of his talk here) that conservatives underestimate the power of narrative and its purpose —...

Ralph Waldo Emerson quipped “There is properly no history; only biography.” It’s a line that lends to exaggeration for effect but speaks to the centrality of narrative and story. One of the great books I had the pleasure of reading about in regards to our story of independence is Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer. It was fascinating to read about how a group of men came together to defend their property, way of life, munity against the British...

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and a member of the editorial advisory board for the Journal of Markets & Morality, has written a memoir reflecting on his introduction to and engagement with the thought of Abraham Kuyper. His book is titled, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction, and in an essay appearing at the Comment site, Mouw writes about the significance of Kuyper for the evangelical world today. “The interest in neocalvinist thought is growing beyond the...

Dodd-Frank regulations, originally scheduled to take effect on July 16, are intended to create market stability. Instead, they are doing just the opposite. Regulations aimed at financial derivatives, incorporated into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law last July, have recently been rescheduled to take effect on December 31. The regulations are aimed at reducing the risk of derivatives, a contentious issue among those debating the root cause of the financial crisis. A...

Black men and women in America are faced with many problems. Only 47 percent of black males graduate from high school on pared to 78 percent for white males. In America between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. These are just a few of the many daunting statistics. These are problems that make can make even the strongest person tired. Often we look to government to solve...

Bread for the World CEO David Beckmann once said, “We can’t food-bank our way to the end of hunger.” As I said then, if “changing the politics of hunger” means that more people are getting food assistance from the government rather than food banks munity efforts, count me out. But on a more hopeful note, this story from NPR tracking how Walmart has partnered with Feeding America, the largest food bank network in the nation, to get food that would...

Elise Amyx recently published an interesting post about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, focusing on financial regulation. Another interesting look at regulation concerns the “Ponzi scheme” that Bernard Madoff was apprehended for three years ago. The tale begins in 2000 when Harry Markopolos, a chartered financial analyst and certified fraud examiner, submitted information to the Security and Exchange Commission’s Director of Enforcement, Grant Ward, that there were signs that Madoff was operating a fraudulent fund. However,...