In anticipation of tonight’s Erasmus lecture by Archbishop Chaput, and for those who aren’t familiar with his writings, here is a short essay by him at Public Discourse two months ago that lays out a particular pressure suffered by faithful at the current time. It is the role of law in their religious observance, or rather, the conflict between the two. Continue Reading »
A GOP poll confirms recent trends. Single women don’t like the conservative message. The poll takers and those running the focus groups asked about various policies about equal pay, education, jobs, and so forth, which is natural. That’s typically what we debate in politics. But I think the gap has a deeper explanation that brings the challenge we face into focus. Continue Reading »
Although I am grateful to Peter Leithart for his interest in my work and his efforts to understand my views about basic human goods, his critique of my thought on the subject seems to me to have gone (to use his term) awry. Continue Reading »
Justice Sotomayor could simply have discussed the high standard for a temporary injunction and left it there; that would have made for a much stronger opinion. As it is, her dissent suggests a level of frustration that the Court’s ruling really doesn’t merit. Continue Reading »
Perhaps the politicization of the IRS was inevitable. In any event, the agency is now completely out of control and has become an active threat to the integrity of our political system and the liberty and privacy of the American people. Continue Reading »
I found myself backtracking after working through Piketty’s discussion of inequality of labor income. That’s because there’s data that works against his main thesis that, because r>g, capital becomes ever more important than labor. Continue Reading »
Piketty toggles back and forth between numbers and speculation (often political and sociological) with enough frequency to hold the lay reader’s interest. I see now why the book has been a hit. Continue Reading »
Part Two of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century concerns history of capital in relation to income (the capital/income ratio) over the course of the twentieth century. Continue Reading »
Bravo to Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana for vetoing a gestational surrogacy bill passed by the state legislature. Fighting infertility is good. Promoting the adoption of children in need of parents is good. But gestational surrogacy is badbad for children, bad for women, bad for the community. There are better ways. If you doubt that (or even if you don’t), please see the documentary film “Breeders: A Subclass of Women” by the great Jennifer Lahl. Anyway, Jindal did the right thing and demonstrated that he is someone who possesses the couragerare among politiciansto stand for principle.Wouldn’t you love to see that quality in a President? Continue Reading »