Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000–1800 Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden (Princeton University Press, $50, 261 pages) Economics historians Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten have written an excellent book on the development of capitalism that is steeped in history, economics, sociology, and theology. The authors show that free markets grew locally, where merchants were able to limit or escape from [...]
Oswald Clark and Paul Tuns: June 24 marked the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the infamous 1973 decision which created a “right to abortion” and severely limited the ability of states to restrict abortion in the United States. Dobbs permitted abortion to be returned to state legislatures for regulation or prohibition. Over the last 12 months, [...]
Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality David Edmonds (Princeton, $40, 380 pages) Oxford University philosophy professor Derek Parfit is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the last half century but is barely known outside academia. He made important contributions to questions such as identity and freedom, but might be best known for his ideas about future [...]
Liana Gordon: The Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform is in the middle of their largest tour ever this summer, bringing never-before-seen photos of abortion to the streets for the Canadian public. According to their website, the CCBR is an “educational human rights organization dedicated to speaking out on behalf of the youngest and most vulnerable members of the human family.” Part of [...]
Hungary fights for the family The European Union, presently comprised of 27 nations, operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making. The larger countries such as Germany and France, are run by governments that are at the vanguard of social liberalism’s many experiments, and they control many decisions in the EU. Currently, they are fighting to strip Hungarian parents of [...]
Joanna Alphonso: Cardus, a non-partisan and Christian research group, released a pair of statistical reports on Canadian families and fertility earlier this year. The first report, titled “Canadian Children at Home,” examines the evolving family structure across the country. Peter Jon Mitchell found the number of children living in married-parent families has declined over the years with just 60 per cent of [...]