James R. Rogers

“Sin’s Political Lessons” is one of three addresses given to a symposium on “After Liberalism,” put on in late February with the support of the Simon/Hertog Fund for Policy Analysis and of Fieldstead and Company. The following is a response to Wilfred M. McClay’s . . . . Continue Reading »

The book, The Hunger Games, is of course better than the movie. The book’s story moves with the internal dialogue of the teen protagonist, Katniss. In contrast, the film’s story moves along through events external to Katniss. As a result of this shift, the film throws away our window into Katniss’s mind and, significantly, into her moral psychology, both of which are by far the most engaging part of the book (and the entire trilogy of books for that matter)… . Continue Reading »

The Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs recently released results of their 2012 survey of “millennials.” “Millennials” are young adults between the ages of 18 and 24. The report . . . . Continue Reading »

Former US Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Altman writes in the Financial Times that increasing income inequality in the US has three causes: the increasing role that information technology plays in work; a supply shortage of workers with the requisite IT skills to take full advantage of this shift; and weak rates of graduation from high schools and universities… . Continue Reading »

My beef with Rick Santorum’s 2008 speech before Ave Maria University is not that it was too Christian, but that it was not Christian enough. I love my country, served happily in the military for eight years (full disclosure: in the National Guard), and the hair on my neck still stands up . . . . Continue Reading »

Speaking at a campaign event on Monday, February 13 in Mesa, Arizona, Mitt Romney made a bold suggestion about the Constitution and Declaration of Independence: “They’re either inspired by God or written by brilliant people or perhaps a combination of both.” Inspired by God? It sounds like just another sop tossed to Tea-Party constitutionalism, but Romney was in fact invoking a longstanding Mormon doctrine which views the U.S. Constitution as not only great, but literally divine… . Continue Reading »

A chorus of conservative criticism greeted the invocation of martial virtue in his State-of-the-Union speech. Max Boot  wrote that the military is “not a model for the rest of society.” Matthew Cantirino  found Obama’s “conflation of ‘military’ and . . . . Continue Reading »

While reading of the exchange between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney on voting rights for felons last week, it occurred to me that in the 20-plus years since I started going into prisons as a volunteer, none of the men on the inside has told me what he misses about the free world is voting. The men”I’ve only worked with men”tell me that they miss their mothers (although, poignantly, very few mention missing their fathers), they miss their wives, children and jobs. Several have even mentioned missing Dr. Pepper. But none has mentioned to me that he misses the voting booth… . Continue Reading »

George Washington Law Professors David Fontana and Donald Braman ran a survey experiment on what happens to public support for the Supreme Court when it makes a controversial decision. They will publish the full results of their study later this spring in the Columbia Law Review , but they . . . . Continue Reading »

At least since Gary Becker won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics almost twenty years ago, I don’t think that we really have the option of treating “social policy” and “economic policy” as hermetically separate categories. Since I assume that the Wall Street Journal . . . . Continue Reading »