Humbug to Scrooge & Sanger: The Constitution & the “Surplus Population”

By |2023-01-06T15:04:38-06:00January 6th, 2023|Categories: Constitution, Economics|

The "surplus population" is, in fact, the population that the Constitution is made to protect. What do Ebenezer Scrooge and Planned Parenthood have in common? The fundamental answer to this question is more than a sentimental appeal to “the Christmas spirit” or a “cheap-shot” at the abortion industry. The answer is found in the writings [...]

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, [...]

When Is There Too Much Whisky?

By |2022-10-05T14:46:02-05:00October 5th, 2022|Categories: Community, Culture, Economics, John Horvat|

Whisky is not a product of savvy entrepreneurs. It is a product of Scottish culture that, like the drink, should be savored and appreciated. The primary consumers should be the local populations that imagined whisky. When operations go big to satisfy cosmopolitan demand, they lose something of that human touch and local flavor that give [...]

Romantic Nationalism, Trade, & Moral Contingency

By |2022-10-10T19:42:49-05:00September 20th, 2022|Categories: Adam Smith, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Economics, Free Markets, Free Trade, Nationalism, Pat Buchanan, Political Economy, Wilhelm Roepke|

It is the perennial task of the conservative to disentangle the truth from the weeds of confusion which keep growing up around it. Samuel Francis and Patrick Buchanan have greatly contributed to the present resurgence of conservative elements rising up in America. Whatever political victories may come of their work should certainly be celebrated. “Go [...]

The Dignity of Work

By |2022-09-04T16:09:51-05:00September 4th, 2022|Categories: Coronavirus, Culture, Economics, Labor/Work, Timeless Essays|

When the government began to define “essential” services, I began to question the relationship between man and his labor: Does man simply work to provide the means to live for his household or does he engage in work for its own sake? The rising unemployment numbers, which of course is the natural consequence of a [...]

Should We Forgive Student Loan Debt?

By |2022-08-31T12:09:51-05:00August 30th, 2022|Categories: David Deavel, Economics, Education, Politics, Senior Contributors|

Everybody agrees student loan debt is a large problem, having serious adverse effects on family formation, purchasing of houses, and many other aspects of American life. So, what should we do? Everybody agrees student loan debt is a large problem. In the United States approximately $1.5 trillion is currently owed by around 45 million people [...]

The Causes of the Great Depression

By |2022-08-09T16:32:31-05:00August 9th, 2022|Categories: Economic History, History, Mark Malvasi, Senior Contributors|

By the fall of 1932, most Americans had come to perceive the depression differently than they had at its beginning. Growing numbers began to worry that depression, rather than being a temporary and purgative event, marked a permanent condition of material scarcity and economic stagnation. With fears mounting that the economy is about to slip [...]

Tools: Work Done Right

By |2022-08-03T17:24:10-05:00August 3rd, 2022|Categories: Books, History, John Willson, Labor/Work, Timeless Essays|

Tools are a significant part of the permanent things, but they are also relative to time, place, and function. That is, we are tool-using animals, whether it is a flint-edged knife, or the one supposedly developed by Jim Bowie, or the Swiss Army knife. Or to put it another way, we are an ingenious species, [...]

The Tory Tradition

By |2022-07-31T15:25:38-05:00July 31st, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Economics, England, History, Liberalism, Politics, Timeless Essays|

There is a Tory tradition in America that runs against the grain of establishment Liberalism, embracing home, hearth, community, family, church, nature, and the moral realities of everyday life, and opposed to individualism, unlimited free markets, libertarianism, secularism, and the rootless loneliness of global modernity. This tradition comes from within America, not without. One day [...]

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 [...]

Josemaría Escrivá: The Saint of Ordinary Life

By |2022-06-25T16:53:38-05:00June 25th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Labor/Work, Sainthood, St. Josemaria Escriva, Timeless Essays|

Everyday life is the true setting for your lives as Christians. Your ordinary contact with God takes place where your fellow men, your yearnings, your work and your affections are. There you have your daily encounter with Christ. It is in the midst of the most material things of the earth that we must sanctify [...]

The Poverty of Liberal Economics

By |2022-05-01T08:17:24-05:00April 30th, 2022|Categories: Christianity, Communio, David L. Schindler, Economics, Essential, Free Markets, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Second Spring, Timeless Essays|

The poor, Jesus famously said, will always be with us. Jesus’ followers have often been accused of misusing these words of their Master as an excuse to ignore the systemic causes of poverty. Christians, the charge runs, have preached private benevolence as a substitute for the more arduous, and more courageous, task of fighting to change [...]

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