Past Lectures and Seminars

A Panel with William Dunkelberg and Thomas Patrick Burke William Dunkelberg’s Notes on the Economy Excerpt “An uptick in…lending could help businesses expand and reduce employment,” says the report, reflecting the view ...

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the crime of “discrimination.” But it failed to make a vital distinction. From the point of view of moral principle, there is a difference ...

James Madison is best known for his leading role at the Constitutional Convention, his contributions to The Federalist Papers, and his two terms as the fourth President of the United ...

Leonard Swidler has been for forty years the Christian world’s leading exponent of interreligious dialogue, including dialogue with Islam.  In June this year he accepted an official invitation to make ...

Unlike traditional European conservative movements, the American Right, which evolved into a something of a movement after World War Two, was forced to create its own conservative tradition. The constitutional ...

The Battle over Federal Supremacy and State Rights A seminar with William Adair Bonner, Esq. Does a state law addressing the presence of a person who already illegally entered the United States ...

The First Amendment hallows the rights of freedom of speech, the press, assembly and petition. But the first of these rights, and the one out of which these others historically ...

The U.S. economy officially “peaked” in December of 2007.  18 months later, the economy was still shrinking.  Although it appears that the bottom was reached mid-summer and third quarter growth ...

Austrian School economist Patrick Barron will question much of what you are told is the cause of our current financial crisis. He will argue that the actions government is taking ...

Is current monetary policy inflationary? This seems a reasonable expectation in light of the fact that the Federal Government and Federal Reserve are injecting all together about $4 trillion of ...

Dr. Bill Dunkelberg discussed the current state of the economy, near-term prospects and the likely impact of current monetary and fiscal policies on the economy.  How will the trillion dollars ...

The only successful currency ever known to man is one that is backed by a commodity of lasting value.  All fiat currencies are inherently unstable and lead to massive inflation, ...

Everyone running for president promises “change” and promises a big basket of goodies.  This past election was no exception.  But, once done, the winner’s promises collide with reality, reality in ...

The “Climate Crisis” (nee ‘Global Warming’) has been the focus of discussion since 1988 when NASA Scientist James Hanson proclaimed that he was 99% certain that “the greenhouse effect has ...

Congress passed a “bailout”, but who will it help?  Why did the market crash 800 points days after the bailout was passed?  How did we get into this mess in ...

Four centuries ago the West leapt far ahead of the East. But now the East, using the West’s own inventions, is growing in strength, in a way not seen in ...

Accused of creating a bogus Red Scare and smearing countless innocent victims in a five-year reign of terror, Senator Joseph McCarthy is universally remembered as a demagogue, a bully and ...

A Seminar with Professor John Lukacs More than two hundred years after his birth (1805) interest in Alexis de Tocqueville is greater than ever before. He was read and venerated in ...

For much of human history war has been regarded as something totally outside the realm of morality, a brutal fact of life that just had to be accepted as necessary ...

Is there a justice for society different from ordinary justice?  Justice is the basic virtue of society.  But at the present time our society is attempting to operate with two ...

Christianity counts some two billion adherents and Islam a billion and a half.  It is unlikely that any large numbers on either side will soon convert to the other.  The ...

Many people are concerned about the current state of our nation’s credit markets. There are many different opinions and there is a lot of confusion abroad. In this one-session seminar, ...

The presidential campaign of 2008 advertises itself as being about the present, but it also reflects some old political challenges. One is officials’ affection for infrastructure projects. Another is their ...

Most Americans agree that our current health care system needs reform. Arguably, it is the most important part of our economy because it directly touches everyone. But opinions are strongly ...

The Iraq War was orphaned from the beginning. It had no natural constituencies either at home or abroad.  As a result it has been a topsy-turvy war, plagued from the ...

If we try to book an airline seat at midnight, we are just likely now to get someone in India or the Philippines at the other end of the phone. ...

Despite the impressive size of our secular research universities, they are losing prominence in our national debates. They do not offer political, cultural, social or even scientific leadership to American ...

Manliness means confidence in the face of risk and danger, argues Prof. Mansfield. This is a virtue we all have reason to value. If studies in social psychology show it ...

Many Americans take it as an article of faith that education in a free, democratic nation must be delivered in schools built and controlled by government and paid for out ...

Should employers have the freedom to hire the people they want? This is the controversial question of celebrated legal scholar Richard A. Epstein, professor of law at the University of ...

We expect our government to do many things for us. Some of these things, however, violate both the letter and the spirit of our Constitution, and also have a very ...

Mitchell is one of the nation’s leading experts on tax reform and supply-side tax policy, and he knows how to explain the politics and complexities of tax policy in easy-to-understand ...

During the twentieth century a revolution took place in what we understand by the words “justice” and “injustice.”  Traditionally, as far back as we can go in history, these words ...

In the modern disputes over “life issues,” such as abortion and infanticide, cloning and embryo-destructive research, and physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, as well as issues pertaining to sex, marriage, and ...

When Otto von Bismarck warned that “We must never look into the origin of laws or sausages,” he articulated a principle diametrically opposed to the Enlightenment ideal of intellectual exposure, summed ...