Capitol Reading Group

Is Capitalism morally bankrupt? Five moral flaws and their social consequences

"...Capitalism sets out a framework within which individuals, and society at large, make decisions governing their business and financial affairs. It will be analysed here in terms of its contemporary manifestations, including the corporation as its main actor and engine, and with national governments and international agencies intervening to set many of the rules in a manner which often promotes scale and ‘leverage’. ..."

Parliament’s Equality Bill

"...When speaking in terms of employment, what does the word discrimination mean? It is now almost universally admitted in liberal democracies that discrimination according to extraneous categories like skin color is morally wrong, and for that reason in most democracies it is also illegal. But the word is ambiguous..."

Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion

"...Those who advocate for laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation tend to talk simply about “equality.” Those who seek to stop such laws from coming into existence, or who seek religious exemptions from these laws, tend to talk about “morality” and/or “religious freedom.” ... My goal in this piece is to surface some of the commonalities between religious belief liberty and sexual orientation identity liberty and to offer some public policy suggestions for what to do when these liberties conflict...."

Cicero Superstar

" More rare than athletes who have played both baseball and football in the major leagues are individuals who have achieved great distinction in both politics and philosophy, the vocations that Aristotle deemed most choiceworthy...."

Think Again: God

"...These writers are wrong -- not only about religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures..."

Economic Justice and the Spirit of Innovation

"When the word morality comes up in connection with economics..."

Can America Fail?

" In 1981, Singapore's long-ruling People's Action Party was shocked when it suffered its first defeat at the polls in many years,.. [Dr. Goh Keng Swee} replied, 'Kishore, we failed because we did not even conceive of the possibility of failure.' The siimple thesis of this essay is that American society could also fail if it does not force itself to conceive of failure..."

Last Man Standing

" ... Amid the flood of alarming commentary, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the financial crisis has underscored the continuing strength of American global influence. Although the United States has been the epicenter of the economice problem, it has exhibited enviable economic and political stability,..."

President Obama's Notre Dame Commencement Address

" I want to thank you for this honorary degree. I know it has not been without controversy... Your class has come of age at a moment of great consequence for our nation and the world - a rare inflection point in history where the size and scope of the challenges before us require that we remake our world to renew its promise; that we align our deepest values and commitments to the demands of a new age. It is a privilege and a responsibility afforded a new generation - and a task that you are now called to fulfill..."

Blowing Out Moral Lights Around Us

" President Obama was disarming Sunday at Notre Dame. Yet his winsome candor makes him all the more dangersous, because implicit in it is a wholly, coolly condescending view of the American people..."

Doubt, Dialogue and Demonization

" In his commencement address on Sunday, President Obama, rather than vindicating the university's decision against its countless critics, reinforced the validity of the critics' arguments and the wisdom of the U.S. Bishops' policy. For beneath his ever genial tone, uplifting images and eloquent delivery, President Obama made several major points contrary to the Catholic faith..."

Obama at Notre Dame

" As for his speech, it was un-Barakesque in one sense... But he was Barackesque in striving to minimize those differences..."

The End of Christian America

" The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now--and what, as a nation, we are about to become."

God Still Isn't Dead

" ... Has the model really run out of steam? Betting against American religion has always proved to be a fool's game... Look closer and the new poll numbers are not quite as simple as headlines suggest.."

Mission from Africa

" ... Revival is an eternal theme in the history of Christianity... Today the process is reversing itself, as the populatin of churchgoers dwindles in Europe, remains fairly static in the United States and erupts in the 'global south'... Christianity is practiced differently in the global south, and especially in Africa, where it has been invested with cultural values that long predate the first missinary efforts..."

Red Faith, Blue Faith

" ...The religious right, at least in its cruder expressions, is indeed a phenomenon without a future. A younger generation of evangelicals and their leaders, while generally remaining culturally conservative, tends to view the religious right's model of social engagement as too narrow in focus and too negative in tone.."

Light Out For Christian America?

" ... Actually, what Meacham's statistics show is something far less monumental, but far more interesting, than his headline would have us believe. Fights over the role of religion in American public life nearly always concern the question of which theology (and how much) should be incorporated into the country's civil religion--that is, into the spiritual dimension of its national identity.."

Christians unite to deter Olympics sex traffickers

" ... British Columiba already has a problem with sexual exploitation and human trafficking that the influx of upwards of one-million visitors will only exacerbate... Plans by Christians to confront the problem are taking the form of a two-pronged attack: reducing the supply of children and women who can fall prey to traffickers; and lessening.."

NC Senator Introduces Bill for Human Trafficking Commission

" 'The ordinary person would have no idea that this is going on right under our noses.' - That's how N.C. Senator Ellie Kinaird (D-Orange) describes human trafficking, one of the fastest-growing crimes in the world, and the subject of Senate Bill 353, the latest legislation she has introduced to battle this modern day slavery. "

Senate Reading Group

The Case Against Christian Political Parties

"... While Christians should agree about values or principles, they may, and often will, disagree about policies..."

The Case for Christian Democracy

" Christian Democracy is a long-established and successful political force across Europe, providing decades of stable government and economic growth in a continent ravaged by the Second World War and the sourge of fascism. But its antecedents go back further, to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the political witness of figures such as Abraham Kuyper, Prime Minister of the Netherlands and great Reformed theologian..."

Red Faith, Blue Faith

" Is 'Christian America' dying? And if so, should we mourn or cheer? ... The religious right, at least in its cruder expressions, is indeed a phenomenon without a future..."

Political Pullback for the Christian Right?

" Is the Christian right finished as a political entity? Or, more to the point, are principled Christians finished with politics? These questinos have been getting fresh air lately as frustrated conservative Christians question the pragmatism -- defined as the compromising of principles -- of the old guard. One might gently call the current debate a generational rift..."

Obama's 'Science' Fiction

" ... I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix... I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research - - a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life... a means rather than an end... On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of 'science' and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom..."

 

 

House Reading Group

Atlanta Progressive News fires reporter for trying to be objective

" ... In an e-mail statement, editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week 'because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.'..."

In 'vegetative state' patients, brain scanners show some alert minds

"Many of the patients were labeled with the same grim diagnosis: 'vegetative state.'... But an international team of scientists decided to try a bold experiment using the latest technology to peek inside the minds of 54 patients to see whether, in fact, they were conscious..."

Pulling the Plug on the Conscience Clause

" ... The ongoing transformation in the methods and ethics of medicine raises profound moral questions for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others who believe in the traditional virtues of Hippocratic medicine that proscribe abortion and assisted suicide and compel physicians to 'do no harm.'..."

In 'vegetative state' patients, brain scanners show some alert minds

"Many of the patients were labeled with the same grim diagnosis: 'vegetative state.'... But an international team of scientists decided to try a bold experiment using the latest technology to peek inside the minds of 54 patients to see whether, in fact, they were conscious..."

A Time to Kill

" ... Violence in the pro-life movement has emerged relatively late in the abortion conflict, only recently cliaming the lives of abortion providers. To really understand Tiller's death, therefore, we need to look beyond his own biography to some of the peculiar historical developments that have made abortioin politics in America so distinctive and tragic..."

The Making of a Fugitive

"... The ease with which the prayerful defender of life has since eluded a Federal-local task force of more than 50 agents, assisted by authorities in Canada, Mexico and overseas, suggests that Jim Kopp's interest in disguise may have run deeper than he let on. Kopp is wanted on a Federal material-witness warrant in connection with the fatal shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian on Oct. 23, 1998, in Amherst, N.Y...."

Compassionate Conservatism: Its Brief History, Demise, and Future Prospects

" Many allege--or, arguably, observe--that conservatives are without message. 'Conservatives are not for anything--only against things,' they suggest. It is a good question to ponder: what are conservatives for? What is our agenda or platform?..."

The Declaration of Independence

" When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..."

The Inspiration of the Declaration

" We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation..."

An Election Sermon

" ...The safety of society greatly depends on the disposition of rulers, and the regard they have to equity in their measures of government. If they rule in the fear of God, they will make his laws their pattern in framing and executing their own..."

God is back: How Ned Flanders won the evangelical crusade

" ... But is Ned really such a loser? Look around the world and you find that risible old Nedward - or at least the phenomenon he epitomises - he won one of the great intellectual battles of the past two centuries. And now, far from being put down, Flanderism is spreading around the world, an American export with a potency at least the equal of the very Hollywood products that mock him..."

The End of Christian America

" ...the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, 'this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.' As Mohler saw it, the historic foundatio nof America's religious culture was cracking."

Red Faith, Blue Faith

" ... A younger generation of evangelicals and their leaders, while generally remaining culturally conservative, tends to view the religious right's model of social engagement as narrow in focus and too negative in tone. And the loose language of creating or re-creating a 'Christian America' has always been a heresy, a historical error and a blunder. A hereesy because no kingdom, however admirable, can be properly identified with the Kingdom of God. A historical error..."

The Happiness of the People

" ...Do you want the United States to be like Europe? ... In short, the question has suddenly become urgently relevant because President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe's social democrats..."

Demographics & Depression

"Three generations of economists immersed themselves in study of the Great Depression, determined to prevent a recurrence of the awful events of teh 1930s. And as our current financial crisis began to unfold in 2008, policymakers did everything that those economists prescribed... In other words, the government tried to do everything right, but everything continues to go wrong. We labored hard and traveled long to avoid a new depression, but..."

Faith & Finance

"... As it happens, the problem of trust--of faith--appears in places beyond the current credit crisis. Most of us think of trust as an interiior spiritual disposition. But, linquistically, faith and finance are closely linked: It is no accident..."

 

Senate Reading Group

Off-the-Hill Reading Group

The Happiness of the People

" ...Do you want the United States to be like Europe? ... In short, the question has suddenly become urgently relevant because President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe's social democrats..."

The Welfare State and the Meaning of Life

" ...But Murray's analysis, though otherwise excellent, is missing a crucial element: an appreciation that these spiritual dangers ultimately arise from disregarding the moral law... America shows all the signs of entering a generational political crisis such as we haven't seen since the Great Depression. It is now an open question whether we will continue to be a quasi-capitalist nation, in defiance of fashionable international opinion, or follow the example of our European betters and become a quasi-socialist nation..."

The End of Christian America

" ...the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, 'this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.' As Mohler saw it, the historic foundatio nof America's religious culture was cracking."

Red Faith, Blue Faith

" ... A younger generation of evangelicals and their leaders, while generally remaining culturally conservative, tends to view the religious right's model of social engagement as narrow in focus and too negative in tone. And the loose language of creating or re-creating a 'Christian America' has always been a heresy, a historical error and a blunder. A hereesy because no kingdom, however admirable, can be properly identified with the Kingdom of God. A historical error..."