Restoring Social Justice

What does free enterprise and limited government have to do with human flourishing?  Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute, is author of a new book, The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future.  In it, Brooks discusses how we have entered a new culture where it is paramount that policymakers and politicians articulate their ideas for limited government and free enterprise in language that places man at the center. 

In a recent Washington Post article, he states: “We must do more to show that while we use the language of commerce and business, we believe in human flourishing and contentment.”  We must communicate that “the purpose of free enterprise is human flourishing, not materialism; that we stand for equality of opportunity, not equality of income; that we seek to stimulate true prosperity rather than simply treat poverty; and that we believe in principle over power.”

More than two million children and youth in the United States grow up with at least one parent in a federal or state correctional facility. Children who grow up in single-parent households are seven times more likely to grow up in poverty.  Children of prisoners constitute a highly vulnerable group with multiple risk factors for adverse outcomes, such as anti-social behaviours and crime.

Read about what one local organization is doing to restore families and help break the cycle of poverty and crime.

       On March 11, 2010, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada held its fourth annual policy conference, drawing on the idea that families and parents matter, even beyond the front door of the family home. 

       Top-notch experts on family—such as, Brian Lee Crowley, Dr. Wade Horn, Dr. Miriam Grossman, and The Honourable Diane Finley—provided strong research paired with innovative policy ideas that promote healthy families and a stronger nation.  Audio is now available online.

      Visit the IMFC to read more on research and policies that support the family.

What does effective urban policy look like? Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute offered an answer on a panel about effective solutions to inner city challenges at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Husock argued that cities, “rather than being inevitable cesspools of crime and sin…are, rather, the key foundations of prosperity and economic dynamism.” Husock provided examples of how conservative policies have allowed areas formerly tarnished with crime and poverty to prosper, including the 1996 welfare reform, 1990s Compstat policing in New York City, and public housing reform in Atlanta. For more insight into these effective policies, read Husock’s speech, Conservatives and Cities, and visit the Manhattan Institute’s website on urban affairs: www.CitiesOnAHill.org.

The high levels of family breakdown found in Britain are at the heart of the social breakdown says a new paper out of the Centre for Social Justice (UK). “We cannot ignore the wealth of evidence showing that the family environment in which a child grows up is key in determining their future life outcomes.”

Family structure and process matters, but current government policy in the UK does not reflect this concern for the family as a whole, a deficiency which the paper says only tends to escalate social breakdown.

Read more on the mounting evidence in support of the family’s role in social welfare, as well as the agenda the Centre for Social Justice has proposed for government reform.