Aldo Leopold, one of the fathers of the modern American conservation movement and author of A Sand County Almanac, in his essay “The Farmer as Conservationist” described conservation as “harmony between men and land.” Leopold envisioned the practice of conservation as “not merely a negative exercise of abstinence or caution” but “a positive exercise of skill and insight” whereby the “pure fire of intellect” is made manifest. In defining conservation in such terms, he consciously placed the burden of responsibility for it not in the hands of government agencies but with individual landowners. Why? “Government cannot own and operate small parcels of land,” he wrote, “and it cannot own and operate good land at all.” Government approaches tend to be too clumsy, its solutions too general, and its policies too monolithic; only private...

R&L: At the heart of any discussion about the environment is the question, “What kind of world do we want to live in?” What, to your way of thinking, is the best environment for man?

Dennis: The best environment for man is the environment for liberty. This is an environment that has been hard-won over the years and was somewhat accidental in its occurrence; that is to say, one thousand years ago, men did not go out and say, “We want to live free,” but they learned through trial and error that freedom is a better way for human beings to live. It gave them an opportunity to act like men rather than as slaves, to free their creative capacities, and so, as a by-product, it has created substantial wealth and brought many material benefits and other blessings. Further, it is an...

We live in a time that places a high value on community. The European Economic Community, global markets, the global village, accords and governance--universal fraternity is the wave of the future. Consequently, Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus, with its emphasis on the human person in community, could be seen as simply following these current trends. For those not aware of its continuity with a living tradition, it appears to be an attempt to build bridges where there are none.

This encyclical, however, does indeed stand in continuity with the great tradition of Christian moral teaching. Further, its universal perspective, spanning all places and peoples, argues against the criticism that the pontiff has succumbed to the trendy globalism of our day. What sets it apart from the contemporary...

Noah Webster, el gran lexicógrafo estadounidense nació en una familia puritana que vivía en la Nueva Inglaterra antes de la Revolución. Una vez  culminados sus estudios en 1778 en el College de Yale, comenzó su carrera en leyes, interrumpida debido a un corto período de reclutamiento militar obligatorio para la guerra revolucionaria. Después de 1782, descubrió que su verdadera vocación era el estudio y la enseñanza del idioma Inglés. Sus gramáticas y sus libros de lectura y silabarios comenzaron a ser publicados en 1784, y muchos que permanecieron en la imprenta...

The great American lexicographer Noah Webster was born in pre-Revolutionary New England to a Puritan family. He embarked on a career in law after the completion of his studies at Yale College in 1778, which were interrupted by a swift tour of duty in the Revolutionary War. After 1782, he discovered his true vocation in the study and teaching of the English language. His grammars, readers, and spellers began to be published in 1784, with many remaining in print through the first decade of the twentieth century. Webster had a conversion experience during the Second Great Awakening, whereupon he became an orthodox Calvinist and an ardent Congregationalist....

Tibor Machan’s Generosity: Virtue in Civil Society provides a fascinating and thorough treatment of the role of virtue in a society characterized by limited government, freedom of association, and economic liberty. Its thesis, according to Machan, is that “Generosity is a moral virtue that cannot flourish in a welfare state or in any sort of command economy, because to be generous is to voluntarily help others in certain ways. It will flourish in a free society.” Generosity and virtue cannot flourish without fully embracing economic, political, and personal liberty. As an example, Machan notes the importance of private property for magnanimous action. Generosity will not flourish in societies that do not respect private property because people cannot give away what is not theirs.

This...

It is probably fair to say that many Christian intellectuals regard the positivist, rationalist social sciences with some suspicion. Many Christians would reject outright the proposition that the human person can be studied with the same tools and with the same detachment as inanimate objects. Probably many more Christians would be willing to make limited use of social science research, without accepting the whole philosophical apparatus that seems to go with it.

Among the social sciences, economics would probably win the prize for having the most mechanistic, materialistic view of the human person and his motivations. My background in economics includes thorough training in mathematical modeling of human interactions, as well as in the Humean, Hobbesian subjectivist contractarian approach to...