Free Republic

We live in a culture where, increasingly, any sense of the sacred is being lost. The thought that something could be sacred, special, holy, or somehow “off-limits” is bewildering to many. Indeed many secularists consider those who do see some things as sacred, to be stuffy and somehow arrogant. There are many in our culture who defend the rights of others to burn the flag, ridicule religious symbols (e.g. the cross submerged in urine some years back in a noted “art” museum), and even applaud when, a couple years back, homosexual activists desecrated the Body of Christ by stomping on...

...other additions the Democrats are asking to the administration package, according to a draft of the plan ... -- Judges could rewrite mortgages to lower bankrupt homeowners' monthly payments.

The general view among liberals is that economic inequality is socially undesirable because it makes people miserable; they propose to solve the problem through redistributive policies such as higher income taxes. As a scholar working in the field of public policy, I have long witnessed egalitarian hand-wringing about the alleged connection between inequality and unhappiness. What first made me doubt this prevailing view was that when I questioned actual human beings about it, few expressed any shock and outrage at the enormous incomes of software moguls and CEOs. They tended rather to hope that their kids might become the next...