When today's clergymen expound on issues of political economy we are often given a stark choice. Will we allow companies to selfishly pursue profits or will they recognize a wider social mission? Will workers be paid the barely subsistent market wage or will they be paid a more Christian "living wage"? Even conservatives tell us we must choose between markets and compassion.
Closely linked to the issue of gay marriage is the issue of gay adoption. The subject raises the stakes in the current national controversy, and, as usual, state intervention complicates the picture enormously.
It appears that the issue of global warming is a bit more complicated than those in the major media outlets and the environmentalist organizations would want us to believe. It also appears that our "fragile ecosystem" is a bit more robust than they would have us believe.
Despite the Media Campaign's consistently poor performance, lawmakers are nonetheless set to refund the anti-drug ad program with a new five-year appropriation, which includes a $90 million funding boost! Nevertheless, it's painfully apparent that the public isn't buying what the government is selling.
I know no father who cares a whit about Father's Day. We are pleased to be doted on by our families of course, but we have no longing to be "appreciated" for our special role in the world. Fathers consider what they do to be carrying out the normal duties and requirements of life itself, not some enormous sacrifice for others that periodically needs to be recognized.
The journalist's skill as an observer can only take him so far, if he is observing with the wrong theory in mind. As Thomas Friedman's "Theory of Everything" shows, without the distinction between power and market—the very core of the libertarian idea—a theory of everything can easily turn into a theory of nothing.
No restaurant or bar owner can force anyone to work or eat at his or her establishment, so at best, the state is "rescuing" people from their own free choices, which means that the political authorities—and the activists cheering them on—are in effect also coercing those workers and patrons into making choices that meet state approval.
Weaving a story that combines travelogue with a love story, investment advice, history, geography, economics and world politics is no easy task. But, Jim Rogers succeeds as he had in the investment world.
In a free market, what a person is is determined by how well a person does. But it's different in state-controlled professions. You can be a great doctor but without the license to practice, you are guilty of a serious crime. The same is true in aviation and law. It is not enough to be good at what you do. You must jump through hoops held by politicians and bureaucrats.
This book frightens me. The authors do not confine themselves to a justification of the American invasion of Iraq,
