Free Republic

Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman's book, 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,' provides an illuminating, if not always convincing, examination of how theology influenced modern economic thought.“One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism,” German sociologist Max Weber wrote in his landmark 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, “of rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born from the spirit of Christian asceticism.”Weber attributed the free-market success so prevalent amongst Protestant societies to its origins in Calvinist predestinarian theology: believers could never know for sure whether they had been...

President Obama's re-election team has already been lauded for its mastery of data and organziation, but a feature in today's The New York Times looks at another secret, and more subtle, weapon: Behavioral science. Reporter Benedict Carey talks to some of the members of the campaign's "COBS" team, an informal group of unpaid advisors who shared their knowledge on the latest academic research and theories on how to influence the public's knowledge behavior. Publicly, the group—which it gave itself the name of "consortium of behavioral scientists"—where just friendly volunteers offering advice. None of the social scientists and psychologists who took...

Of all Barack Obama’s costumes, the most ill-fitting is that of the hawk. The guise doesn’t work for all sorts of ideological and historical reasons. Plus there’s the fact that he’s rushing to put on the outfit as he’s heading out the door. The new sanctions against Russia are fine with me on the merits, even if they are remarkably tardy and being sold in no small part for domestic, political reasons. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been undermining American interests for a long time now. From the annexation of Crimea and a shadow war in Ukraine to his unabashed...

It’s easy to point out which tactics won’t work to get American conservatives engaged in the fight against climate change. Recently I’ve critiqued arguments that climate hawks should extend a welcoming hand to right-wingers and that Pope Francis’s climate change encyclical will move any Republicans to embrace the issue. But merely knocking down others’ arguments is insufficient when they are trying to solve a real problem. And this problem is quite real: In order to pass comprehensive climate change legislation federally — and to get the right policies also working in tandem at the state and local levels — some...

Canada’s largest mental health and addiction treatment and research centre is calling for the legalization of marijuana, with strict controls that would govern who could buy weed, from where, and in what quantity. In a policy statement released Thursday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said cannabis should be sold through a government-controlled monopoly and with limited availability and an age limit, possibly through outlets similar to provincially operated liquor stores. “Legalization means that we remove all penalties for cannabis possession and use by adults,” said Jurgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH. “Canada’s...

When you trade shares of Cisco (CSCO: 15.46, -0.12, -0.77%), no one is sacrificing himself on your behalf. You're a willing buyer, someone else is an amenable seller, and you voluntarily agree to transact at a mutually beneficial price. Both parties get what they want. It's the polar opposite of the doctrine of "shared sacrifice" permeating through Washington, and by unfortunate extension, the economy. The burgeoning Federal deficit, now significant enough to warrant a warning from Moody's on the country's AAA rating, can only be solved through shared sacrifice, which, in President Barack Obama's words, means wealthy individuals will finally...

In the Alice-in-Wonderland logic of the left, there is an assumption that America should risk American blood to wage war when – drum roll here – America has nothing at stake. Bosnia comes to mind. And of course now Libya. Erick Erickson over at HumanEvents.com puts it succinctly: . . .

[New Year's resolutions are often put in terms of "I have to" and fill in the blank with what you think you must do. David Kelley warns that "To say 'I have to' is to speak the language of compulsion, duty, authority." David suggests we speak "the language of values instead of the language of duty, 'want-to' instead of 'have-to'."]How many times during the course of a week do we say "I have to..."? I have to take out the trash...change the oil in my car...pay my Visa bill...I have to give a presentation at the sales meeting...take the final...

Pressure mounts over replacement for Clinton By Harvey Morris in New York Published: January 2 2009 19:45 | Last updated: January 2 2009 19:45 Facing one of the most nail-biting choices since the presidential election, David Paterson, the New York governor, has been told he would be guilty of “political malpractice” if he named anyone other than Caroline Kennedy as the state’s new junior representative in the Senate. Mr Paterson, under intense pressure from some of the country’s most powerful political dynasties as he ponders his decision, has sole discretion to appoint a replacement for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who...

In private conversations on troop presence, candidate pitched delay Barbara Slavin Friday, October 10, 2008 At the same time the Bush administration was negotiating a still elusive agreement to keep the U.S. military in Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to convince Iraqi leaders in private conversations that the president shouldn't be allowed to enact the deal without congressional approval. Mr. Obama's conversations with the Iraqi leaders, confirmed to The Washington Times by his campaign aides, began just two weeks after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination in June and stirred controversy over the appropriateness of a White House...

**The first 2008 presidential election event involving the presumptive nominees, Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, took place on August 16 at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. The event was moderated by that church’s pastor, Rick Warren, author of a pop-religion, how-to-improve-your-soul book entitled The Purpose-Driven Life. Warren began by telling his in-house evangelical audience and Fox News Channel viewers that, “We believe in the separation of church and state but we do not believe in the separation of faith and politics because faith is just a worldview and everybody has some kind...

The first 2008 presidential election event involving the presumptive nominees, Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, took place on August 16 at the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. The event was moderated by that church’s pastor, Rick Warren, author of a pop-religion, how-to-improve-your-soul book entitled The Purpose-Driven Life. Warren began by telling his in-house evangelical audience and Fox News Channel viewers that, “We believe in the separation of church and state but we do not believe in the separation of faith and politics because faith is just a worldview and everybody has some kind...

All too often today we hear condemnations of the profit motive as destructive and uncaring. But is it really? Or is the profit motive one of the noblest forces that can impel a man to act? To understand whether the profit motive is desirable, we must first grasp the goals of a life properly lived. These goals are twofold; on the first level, survival is the goal of sustaining one's biological existence and preventing one's downward slide toward poverty, ruination, and death. On the second level, flourishing is the extension of one's control over the external reality—the ability to harness...

Today: December 26, 2006 at 13:45:15 PST Convicted Lawmaker Wants Felons to Vote By BRENT KALLESTAD ASSOCIATED PRESS TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A bill that would automatically return voting rights to felons after they complete their sentences has been introduced by a Florida legislator who is still in office even though he is a convicted felon. The bill introduced Thursday by state Sen. Gary Siplin would change the state's long-standing constitutional ban on felon voting. Now, a felon's rights can only be restored by the state's clemency board, which must hear each case in a process that can take months...

Bill Gates was recently named one of Time's people of the year for the incredible amounts of money he has given to fight poverty and disease around the world. But just because Bill cares about poor people doesn't mean that he wants to see them use Linux. Gates demonstrated the new Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum this week, and later began trash talking the US$100 PC currently under development at MIT. It's hard to see how a philanthropist could not love a device designed to put basic computing power in the hands of every child on...

Gifts... by Edward Hudgins Executive Director The Objectivist Center & the Atlas Society One year I gave my then-young nephew who was in the first years of elementary school a rock for Christmas. Not just any old rock but a piece of sandstone from a science store. In it were embedded fossils, shells and other little surprises. But you couldn't just take a hammer, smash it to pieces and extract your prizes. The rock came with little scraping and brushing tools and, like a paleontologist, you had to slowly and methodically scrape away the rock. It was exciting for me...

When US Representative Henry Hyde spoke about the bill that would penalize the United Nations half the dues it extorts from the US annually for not embracing reform he included as shocking a statement that has ever been uttered on Capitol Hill. He alluded to the fact that those who represent us in Washington DC need to be “good stewards of the people’s money.” Of course, for this statement of common sense to have any meaning those in Washington would first have to understand that the money they “appropriate” isn’t theirs, it’s ours, and that they work for us. I...

There are many kinds of anti-capitalism. The most militant variety, involving street protests and kicked-in windows, has subsided a little lately. But this was never the most important kind. A broader, milder, even cordial, discontent with capitalism saturates Western culture. It has become so familiar that it barely registers at the conscious level. But the feeling is there, and it creates the climate in which public policy is framed. Sipping a cup of Starbucks Fair Trade Blend -- the kind that guarantees growers a "living wage," while encouraging "equitable and sustainable development" (as opposed to the more normal kind of...

"There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world -- and that's the United States -- when it suits our interests, and when we can get others to go along...." This kind of mindless creation of the United Nations as something different from what it's in the United States' interest to do isn't going to sell here or anywhere else. You know this speaker and his ilk. Or do you? Read on. One of the primary complaints about John Bolton is that he does indeed...

If we look back at the war that started on September 11, there have emerged some general rules that should guide us in the next treacherous round of the struggle against Islamic fascism, the autocracies that aid and abet it, and the method of terror that characterizes it. 1. Political promises must be kept. Had the United States postponed the scheduled January elections in Iraq — once the hue and cry of Washington insiders — the insurrection would have waxed rather than waned. Only the combination of U.S. arms, the training of indigenous forces, and real Iraqi sovereignty can eliminate...