On Friday afternoons, we bring you the best of our blog and the best of the web. This week’s round-up includes a call for conservatives and libertarians to work together, a video featuring Arthur Brooks, and an explanation of economics as a tool to navigate our broken world.
1. Jacqueline Otto gives us Five Lessons for Conservatism and Two Voices for Fusionism:
In the opinions of [William] Buckley and [Jonah] Goldberg, a long-view conservative strategy requires a reconciliation between libertarians and conservatives. While there may be disagreements between the two, the survival of the free market is at stake. The war for liberty may be lost while libertarians and conservatives battle over degrees of freedom.2. Over at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics blog, Dr. Anne Rathbone Bradley writes on economics as a tool for navigating our fallen world:
Put simply, economics is the study of individual choice under scarcity and the process of adjustment. Both life and the discipline of economics are dynamic. The conditions and constraints we face are constantly changing. Economics helps us understand how individuals make choices and adjust to new constraints. … I believe God has given us economics to help us find our way through a fallen world, where information is almost endless and not all of it is ever known to one individual.3. Arthur Brooks talks about “The Road to Freedom” on CNBC’s Squawk Box: 4. RJ Moeller writes on the recent events in Greeceand the age-old insights of hard work and personal responsibility:
If the violence in Greece is hard to wrap your mind around, think of it like this: When bundled together over decades, things like free health care, education, guaranteed salaries and early retirement become “rights.” We know and love “rights” here in America more than almost anything else. We’re rightly proud of our Bill of Rights. The procurement of civil rights for minorities is one of our nation’s most noble chapters. We defer to the people who possess the “right of way” out on the road.5. AEI’s Aparna Mathur explains “How Taxing the Rich Harms the Middle Class:
President Obama is against reducing corporate tax rates because he wrongly believes that the corporate income tax is a tax on the rich. The true story, as research suggests, is that in a free market where capital is globally mobile, “rich corporations” don’t pay taxes, workers do. The sooner we learn this lesson, the faster will be the road to recovery for the middle class.
