Capitalism and democracy are weakening – reviving the idea of ‘calling’ can help to repair them

  Ask someone what a calling is, and they’ll probably say something like “doing work you love.” But as a management professor who has spent two decades researching the history and impact of calling, I’ve found it’s much more than personal fulfillment.

  The concept of calling has deep roots. In the 1500s, theologian Martin Luther asserted that any legitimate work – not just work in ministry – could have sacred significance and social value, and could therefore be considered a calling. In this early form, calling wasn’t merely a vocation or passion; it was a way of living and working that built character, competence, and social trust.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse – Alabama’s 1940s congressional delegation

   Recently I came across a copy of an old congressional directory from 1942. It is always fun for me to read about this era in American political history.

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first elected in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. He would go on to be reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944 and would have been reelected into perpetuity. However, he died in Warm Springs, Georgia in April of 1945, only four months into his fourth term. He was the closest thing we Americans have ever had to having a king. Nobody has or ever will serve four terms as president. After FDR's omnipotent reign, the U.S. Constitution was changed to limit our presidents to two four-year terms.

States are weakening their child labor restrictions nearly 8 decades after the US government took kids out of the workforce

  A movement to weaken American child labor protections at the state level began in 2022. By June 2023, Arkansas, Iowa, New Jersey, and New Hampshire had enacted this kind of legislation, and lawmakers in at least another eight states had introduced similar measures.

  The laws generally make it easier for kids from 14 to 17 years old to work longer and later – and in occupations that were previously off-limits for minors.

Separate money and the state

  The United States once had the finest monetary system in history. It was a system that the U.S. Constitution established. It was a system in which the official money of the United States consisted of gold coins and silver coins.

  We often hear that the “gold standard” was a system in which paper money was “backed by gold.” Nothing could be further from the truth. There was no paper money in the United States. That’s because the Constitution did not empower the federal government to issue paper money. It also expressly prohibited the states from issuing paper money.

60 years after JFK, Biden as second Catholic president offers a refresh in church’s political role

  Running to become the first Catholic president of the United States in 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy told an audience of wary Protestant ministers that “if the time should come … when my office would require me to violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office.”

  Sixty years later, Joe Biden has become the second Roman Catholic to win the White House, and some prominent Catholics and bishops now appear to believe that the only way a Catholic should hold office is if putting conscience before what the law says about culture war issues like abortion. Five decades of abortion politics have taken a toll.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse – Alabama’s 1940s congressional delegation

  Recently I came across a copy of an old congressional directory from 1942. It is always fun for me to read about this era in American political history.

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been first elected in 1932 in the depths of the Great Depression. He would go on to be reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944 and would have been reelected into perpetuity. However, he died in Warm Springs, Georgia in April of 1945, only four months into his fourth term. He was the closest thing we Americans have ever had to having a king. Nobody has or ever will serve four terms as President. After FDR's omnipotent reign, the Constitution was changed to limit our presidents to two four-year terms.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Conservatives and the free market

  One of things that conservatives love to tell people is how devoted to the free market they are. A recent example involved GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who criticized Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for being socialists while Rubio, as a conservative, was supposedly devoted to free enterprise.

  What a joke. Conservatives are no more devoted to the free market than leftists are. They just like to tell themselves that and others as well. But their pro-free-enterprise proclamations are nothing more than empty bromides and pabulum.