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Acton and Burke: For the conservative wisdom of history and tradition
What Lord Acton particularly admired in the later Edmund Burke was his empirical philosophy of politics, his refusal to give way to the metaphysical abstractions, the a priori speculations, that had been insinuated into public life by the rationalists of the French Revolution. Facts, Burke had admonished, are a severe taskmaster. They prohibit the idle vanities of philosophy and the bureaucratic pretensions of a logical, all-embracing political science, a summum bonum of mankind available to the benevolent legislator or administrator.Lord Acton and the idea of liberty
The opening words of Lord Acton’s first lecture on the History of Freedom in 1877 set the theme: “Liberty, next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, 2,460 years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race.” In the course of time, constitutions were perverted, charters became obsolete, parliaments abdicated and peoples erred, but the idea of liberty survived.The higher calling of the dismal science
Economist and theologian Paul Heyne once asked the question, “Are economists basically immoral?” He asked this because economists have a frustrating tendency to interrupt the high moral aspirations of others with complications about how, in the real world, life is not so simple. When other people are concerned with social justice and love, they have a knack for focusing on things like costs and logistics, seemingly putting a price on doing the right thing. Is this just an annoying habit of a small subset of social scientists, or might it be a moral calling?Why the Left keeps winning
Whether it’s the rise to national prominence of Vermont’s self-described democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders, the election of a beyond-stereotypical 1970s sandal-wearing bearded-lefty, Jeremy Corbyn, as British Labour leader, polls estimating that 36 percent of Americans millennials have positive views of socialism, the breakthrough into mainstream politics by left-wing parties such as Syriza in Greece, the Scottish Nationalists in Britain, and Poemos in Spain, or New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s latest social engineering programs, it’s hard to deny that the Left seems emboldened throughout much of the West today.The frontier spirit of ‘The Martian’
The Martian, based on the best-selling novel by Andy Weir, taps into the quintessential American theme of the great frontier and the aspiration for the transcendent that it signifies.
There is no such thing as ‘the poor’
There are only poor people, and each of them manages her resources as effectively as circumstances permit – and her circumstances are unique to her, at a specific time and in a particular place.Fear and loathing stalk the West
Civilizations come and civilizations go. While some prove capable of inner renewal, there’s no guarantee that any given culture will maintain itself over long periods of time. Today we continue to admire the achievements of Greece and Rome. As distinct living cultures, however, they’ve been dead for centuries.The economic reeducation of Pope Francis?
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Pope Francis’s visit to the United States last week was a great success. The media mostly focused on the personality of “this pope,” comparing him favorably to his immediate predecessor and hinting that his more relaxed stance on Church teaching was the main reason for his popularity.Is Catholicism compatible with the American experiment?
In a much-cited 2014 article in the American Conservative, the political philosopher Patrick Deneen argued that the real debate unfolding among American Catholics was not one of “conservative” versus “liberal” Catholics. That discussion, Deneen suggested, is passé. This is partly because (as Cardinal John Henry Newman observed) liberalism in religion is ultimately self-immolating.The bright side of Sharia law
The warnings of recent papal teachings on questions of social justice rarely – if ever – identify the dangers of a highly bureaucratized central government. Apparently most of the sinful and corrosive “love for money” comes from private sector capitalists, not government public sector agencies. Certainly corporate capitalistic greed can and does have serious economic consequences. But is it reasonable to ignore the negative economic consequences of Big Government, its centralized control and bureaucratic demands?The Francis-Trump populist nexus
Populism and free markets have a strained relationship. On the one hand, free markets have raised the living standards of ordinary people beyond belief and given them opportunities their ancestors couldn’t possibly imagine. So one would think any leader who wants the people on his side would promote market economics. On the other hand, actual populists around the world demagogue against capitalism any chance they get and the people often approve, even though soaking the rich rarely helps the non-rich and usually makes everyone worse off.The moral dimension of work
- "The moral foundation of political economy,” to use Lord Acton’s phrase, rests on the connection of liberty with right, of right with duty, of duty with leisure and delight, and of all with
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