Capitalism and the Gospel of Love

By |2023-09-06T19:06:29-05:00September 6th, 2023|Categories: Adam Smith, American Republic, Capitalism, Economics, Free Markets, George Stanciu, Love, Modernity, Timeless Essays|

In “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith was absolutely right: The widespread division of labor would cause the interior life to die; an unsurprising result, for under capitalism, the human person became a commodity, a resource, a thing used to further profits. My parents, Romanian gypsies, born in a Transylvanian village and raised in thatched-roofed [...]

“The Hour of Fate”: Theodore Roosevelt & American Capitalism

By |2023-08-21T18:27:32-05:00August 21st, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Books, Capitalism, Economics, Politics, Presidency, Teddy Roosevelt, Timeless Essays|

Theodore Roosevelt was the obvious victor in both of the “battles to transform American capitalism.” He refused to do the bidding of the coal operators and instead helped engineer a compromise. American capitalism was not so much transformed as tamed in the process. The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan and the Battle to [...]

How Modernity Diminishes the Human Person

By |2023-06-22T17:04:34-05:00June 22nd, 2023|Categories: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Apple, Capitalism, Community, Democracy, Democracy in America, Featured, George Stanciu, St. John's College, Technology, Timeless Essays|

Because of the strong secular faith instilled in us by education, most of us trust that science and technology, democracy, and capitalism, the three legs of Modernity, can bring about only good ends and fail to see that these three triumphs of humankind can diminish the human person. With the publication of the book The [...]

Is Capitalism Intrinsically Woke?

By |2023-05-31T15:43:10-05:00May 31st, 2023|Categories: American Republic, Capitalism, David Deavel, Distributism, Economics, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays|

“Capitalists” are often accused of wanting unfettered markets in which the only value is the almighty dollar and nobody cares about anything that is not related to making money. But others claim that capitalism is progressive by nature. Which is it? Is capitalism itself intrinsically “woke”? In “The Distributist” column in the latest issue of [...]

Should Everyone Go to College?

By |2022-10-13T16:32:01-05:00October 13th, 2022|Categories: Bruce Frohnen, Capitalism, Economics, Education, Politics, Timeless Essays|

True educational reform must re-establish the secondary school as a place for broad learning, vocational training as a highly respected route to respectable work, and college as a place for higher learning. The call for college to be made “free” to all who want it rests on a number of assumptions, most of them self-serving, [...]

The Best Possible World and Concrete Living

By |2022-07-18T19:30:44-05:00July 18th, 2022|Categories: Adam Smith, Capitalism, Free Markets, George Stanciu, Politics, Timeless Essays|

When we strip away all the fancy arguments and strong opinions about capitalism, or industrialism if you like, we see a person in the workplace is a commodity, a thing to be used up and discarded. As a result, capitalism creates a thing-oriented society, where machines, profits, and properties are more important than people. I [...]

Celebrating Aaron Feuerstein: An Example of Selfless Generosity

By |2021-11-17T08:06:04-06:00November 16th, 2021|Categories: Audio/Video, Capitalism, Community, Free Markets, John Horvat, Labor/Work|

What made Aaron Feuerstein famous was not success but his attitude in the face of catastrophe. When a fire destroyed the textile mill he owned, he faced the decisions of whether to rebuild and whether to continue to pay his 1,400 workers, who were left destitute in the dead of winter. His decision became a [...]

Remembering Michael Novak’s “Democratic Capitalism”

By |2021-09-27T15:18:16-05:00September 27th, 2021|Categories: Books, Bradley J. Birzer, Capitalism, Democracy, Economics, Senior Contributors|

One doesn’t have to agree with everything Michael Novak argued to recognize the genius of the man. Like all true conservatisms, his democratic capitalism was as much an anti-system as anything recognizable as a system. He was a giant of an intellect, and his best book deserves to be remembered, even if in friendly opposition. [...]

Antifa: The Stormtroopers of Global Capitalism

By |2020-09-17T15:04:13-05:00September 20th, 2020|Categories: Capitalism, Economics, Joseph Pearce, Politics, Senior Contributors|

In seeking to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency, the Marxists and anarchists of Antifa and other groups are doing the dirty work of the richest and most powerful people in the world. Regardless of whether or not they know that this is what they are doing, Antifa are the stormtroopers of global capitalism. There was a [...]

Is Christianity in America Subservient to Capitalism?

By |2020-07-16T20:13:27-05:00July 16th, 2020|Categories: Capitalism, Charity, Christianity, Economics, George Stanciu, Labor/Work, Modernity, Senior Contributors|

The silence from the pulpit about the low-wage workers, 44% of the population, is disgraceful, although understandable, because Christianity in America has rarely challenged the ethos of capitalism. As a result, churches have virtually no role in political or economic life. The COVID-19 Pandemic has revealed that we no longer have the equivalent of such [...]

Why Adam Smith’s Critique of Mercantilism Matters Today

By |2021-03-08T16:18:20-06:00July 1st, 2020|Categories: Adam Smith, American Republic, Capitalism, Economic History, Economics, Free Markets, Free Trade, Political Economy|

Adam Smith, the father of the discipline we now refer to as economics, was a moral and political philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and contemporary and acquaintance of Edmund Burke. Long heralded as a proponent of self-regulating markets, limited government, and free-market “capitalism,” Smith is often invoked by proponents of corporate capitalism as an archetype [...]

Henri Lefebvre and the Urban Revolution

By |2020-02-21T11:39:24-06:00February 21st, 2020|Categories: Capitalism, Conservatism, Economics, Philosophy|

A sociologist born at the turn of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre is a figure whose writings shed light on questions pertaining to rural life versus urban life, theories of the state, modernity, and the role of social space and markets in cities. Beyond sociology, he is considered an important figure in both urban studies [...]

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