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Mediating Institutions
One of the most vital insights of modern social thought is the importance of mediating institutions–churches, schools, fraternal organizations, professional associations, and even clubs–for a free society. Not only are they effective, sometimes crucial, in providing services of all sorts, they are, as Tocqueville pointed out, a bulwark of freedom against the encroaching power of the state.Choice Brings Peace
The Supreme Court’s ruling that it does not violate the First Amendment for parents to use school vouchers to send children to religious schools has set off a firestorm of debate over the establishment clause of the Constitution. For a society that is so overwhelmingly religious, as much now as ever before in American history, we seem to have grave difficulties reaching a balanced view of the relationship between faith and public life.George Orwell: A Study in Trans-Political Truth-Speaking
No writer of the twentieth century has touched popular political sensibilities with as broad an effect as George Orwell. There is enduring interest in his two antitotalitarian novels, Animal Farm and 1984, which together set forth a sort of intellectual prophetic ground for the Cold War that Orwell only just glimpsed, dying as he did in 1950 of tuberculosis.Why Should Businessmen Read Great Literature?
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. —Sir Francis Bacon Leisure without human letters amounts to death, the entombment of a living man. —Saint William Fermat Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library. —Sir Winston ChurchillWhat's Right for Labor
Monsignor George G. Higgins, who died at the age of eighty-six on May Day 2002, dedicated his social ministry to improving the lives of workers. A priest with a doctorate in labor economics, he was uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of Roman Catholic social teaching concerning the dignity of the worker. Father Higgins was also a passionate defender of religious liberty in the American tradition and was very influential in the Second Vatican Council’s statement on behalf of human dignity and freedom.
Thomas Jefferson and the Mammoth Cheese
On New Year’s Day, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a mammoth cheese was delivered to the White House by the itinerant Baptist preacher John Leland. It measured more than four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, and seventeen inches in height; once cured, it weighed 1,235 pounds.The Political Is Personal
The horrors of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath have so occupied our minds for the past nine months that the serious social pathologies of our urban centers have receded from our attention. The actions of a few terrorists somehow make even mugging, robbery, drug peddling, and inadequate education seem like minor troubles. These problems are not going away, however, and they may not be ignored.Toward a Free and Virtuous Society
It is a telling commentary on our times that the political and ethical cognoscenti associate freedom with licentiousness, antinomianism, atomistic individualism, and an array of similar vices antithetical to virtue. Despite this attitude on the part of many professional intellectuals, common sense tells any sane person that a society that is both free and virtuous is the place in which he would most want to live. But what exactly would it mean to advocate and work toward the construction of such a society?The Good of Affluence
“We are going to see a revival in this country, and it's going to be led by rich people.” — Michael Novak, cited in Dinesh D' Souza's Virtue of ProsperityChristendom, Power, and Authority
The conceptual distinction between the exercise of authority and the exercise of power provides an essential guide to understanding the present and future status of Christendom, which has not been abolished but, rather, has taken on new forms in our times. The Second Vatican Council, in its document Lumen Gentium, clarified that the Kingdom of God is not a place or a government, much less an earthly end-state arrived at through the political process.Living truth for a post-Christian world: The message of Francis Schaeffer and Karol Wojtyla
These two great Christian pastors probably would have liked each other as well as deeply appreciated each other’s vision of the Christian life, each marked by intellectual vigor, theological substance, doctrinal orthodoxy, compassion, and a love for people.A subtle threat to freedom
The popular media's use of the words community, society, state, and government interchangeably introduces a fallacy with potentially dire consequences.