Fiscal Conservatism Is Not Enough:

What Social Conservatives Offer the Party of Lincoln The Republican victories in Massachusetts (Scott Brown), New Jersey (Chris Christie), and Virginia (Bob McDonnell), coupled with growing disenchantment with President Obama’s initiatives, has the Republican party feeling bullish about its prospects for congressional elections this fall. Many strategists are predicting a repeat of 1994, where the […]

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The Deconstruction of Marriage, Part 2:

Is the Political Economy of Gender-Based Affirmative Action Good for the Home Economy? George Steven Swan, S.J.D. When the new governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was on the campaign trail last summer, the Washington Post expressed alarm about his 1989 master’s thesis that had noted, among other things, the impact of rising rates of labor-force […]

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Waxing State, Waning Family: The Radical Agenda of the American Law Institute

The one great principle of the English law, is to make business for itself.—Charles Dickens, Bleak House In the modern state, law—like nature—displays a marked distaste for a vacuum. Spurred by elites distrustful of independent social institutions and a cultural embrace of atomistic individualism, the United States in past decades has experienced a dramatic incursion […]

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The Supreme Court of the United States Versus The American Family

Large-scale wars often take place on several fronts. In its undeclared war against the American family, the Supreme Court of the United States has initiated conflict in several areas of constitutional law. The Court launched its first attacks more than fifty years ago, with the most important developments occurring from roughly 1957 to 1977. Today, […]

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Committees Gone Wild:

How U.N. Bureaucrats Are Turning ‘Human Rights’ Against the Family Ever since President Woodrow Wilson lobbied for his League of Nations at the end of World War One, Americans have resisted international political causes or organizations. In recent years, that resistance has been directed against the United Nations and its international human rights conventions that […]

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The Roots of the Judicial Assault on the Family

Living Constitution, Dying Faith:Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence Bradley C. S. Watson ISI Books, 2009; 250 pages, $25.00 Toward the end of Living Constitution,Bradley C. S. Watson recalls the remark by the second Earl of Pembroke as to how Parliament can do anything but make a man into a woman. Pembroke’s point was that […]

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Economics Deconstructed

The Dismal Science:How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community Stephen A. Marglin Harvard University Press, 2008; 359 pages The best thing about The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community is the title. Stephen Marglin is absolutely right that something is wrong with modern economics, particularly its treatment of communities of all kinds, including the […]

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The Origins of the Red State–Blue State Divide

Family and Civilization Carle C. Zimmerman; Edited by James Kurth with an introduction by Allan C. Carlson ISI Books, 2008; 320 pages, $18.00 The War between the State and the Family:How Government Divides and Impoverishes Patricia Morgan Transaction Publishers, 2008; 162 pages, $24.95 When first published in 1947, Family and Civilization was a significant book on the […]

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Is the Despotism that Tocqueville Feared Inevitable?

Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift:Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect Paul A. Rahe Yale University Press, 2008; 400 pages, $38.00 The American people have fallen into the habit of expecting government to solve all problems, removing risk from their lives, and providing for all their needs and wants. It is commonplace now for individuals to look […]

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Mom’s Income, Junior’s Illness

When Mother finds employment outside the home, she is likely to spend part of her paycheck on medical care for her young child. The relationship between a mother’s employment and her child’s illness receives scrutiny in a study by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Baruch College in New York. That relationship […]

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