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Who Puts the Self in Self-Interest?
Self-interest is at the heart of economic analysis. The primary assumption of economists is that people pursue their self-interest, or in the technical expression, that people seek to maximize utility defined by the utility function. The economist typically does not analyze the content of the preferences; rather, the preferences are taken as datum or as parameters to the economist’s problem. The business of economics is to understand how people with given preferences make choices under constraints.Social Security and the Free Society
Social Security has had a profound effect on the way Americans view the government’s role in society and on our confidence in the free society’s ability to solve difficult social problems. Make no mistake, the care of the aged is a difficult social problem that, in my opinion, cannot be solved through purely market means. To say that it cannot be addressed by means of economic exchange alone, however, is not to imply that public solutions are always preferable to private ones.Renewing Our Experiment in Ordered Liberty
In his breathtaking new book, A History of the American People, English historian Paul Johnson writes, “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story holds such tremendous lessons, for the American people themselves and for the rest of mankind.… The great American republican experiment … is still the first, best hope for the human race” and “will not disappoint an expectant humanity.”Living Responsibly: Václav Havel's View
If you could have one chance to speak to the world’s most powerful political body, what would you say?The Samaritan and Caesar
The eleventh-grade catechism class I taught was looking forward to the big day. The confirmation mass would mark the culmination of twelve years of religious education and would be a kind of graduation ceremony inducting them into the responsibilities of a mature Christian life. Confirmands had been prepared to pray for a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, for special grace that would strengthen them in their baptismal vows and help gird their loins for Christian battle.The First and Fundamental School
As I sat in the audience during Pope John Paul II’s final Mass in Cuba in January of last year, I was impressed by the explosion of exaltation from the crowd when he spoke firmly to the question of education. He told all parents in Cuba that they, not the state, are entrusted by God to make decisions about their children’s education.The International Vocation of American Business
Few today believe that socialist economics is the wave of the future, but most nations still find it difficult to root themselves in capitalism, democracy, and moral purpose. Most have little experience under the rule of law. Most of the countries of the former Soviet Union, most of Asia (emphatically including China), much of the Middle East, and most of Africa lack many of the cultural and political habits and institutions required for a successful capitalist system.Toward Responsible Stewardship
What does Christianity teach about the place of the environment in political and personal ethics? I can think of no clearer statement than that provided by Pope John Paul II in his 1991 Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus. In one passage, the pope addresses environmental issues by saying that ecological problems result when “man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive and disordered way.The Ecological Garden
... the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, ... took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it. (Gen. 2:7-8, 15 nrsv)Can Christian Theology Let the Trees Do the Talking?
In 1958, an eighty-seven-year-old Stoney Indian by the name of Walking Buffalo spoke to an audience in London, England. The question before him that day was something like: “Why, in the end, could white Americans and native Americans not get along?” He gave this extraordinary answer:Keeping Stable the Fabric of the World
In 1997 the Media Research Center surveyed prime-time television’s portrayal of the businessman. The results, while not surprising, were sobering. The study found that, on television, businessmen committed far more crimes (29.2 percent) than those in all other occupations, including career criminals (9.7 percent). Overall, businessmen were shown making a contribution to society 25 percent of the time, but they cheated to get ahead almost 30 percent.The Heritage of the Spanish Scholastics
The Yucatan was the center point of one of the most im- portant moral debates in history. It can be summarized in the title of the book, In Defense of the Indians: The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapa, Against the Persecutors and Slanderers of the Peoples of the New World Discovered Across the Seas.