Credit: Mr. Fish / Truthdig

The greatest moral failing of the liberal Christian church was its refusal, justified in the name of tolerance and dialogue, to denounce the followers of the Christian right as heretics. By tolerating the intolerant it ceded religious legitimacy to an array of con artists, charlatans and demagogues and their cultish supporters. It stood by as the core Gospel message—concern for the poor and the oppressed—was perverted into a magical world where God and Jesus showered believers with material wealth and power. The white race, especially in the United States, became God’s chosen agent. Imperialism and war became divine instruments for purging the world of infidels and barbarians, evil itself. Capitalism, because God blessed the righteous with wealth and power and condemned the immoral to poverty and suffering, became shorn of its inherent cruelty and exploitation. The iconography and symbols of American nationalism became intertwined with the iconography and symbols of the Christian faith. The mega-pastors, narcissists who rule despotic, cult-like fiefdoms, make millions of dollars by […]

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Credit: Till Lauer/Economist

Our annual “country of the year” award celebrates improvement. Each December, therefore, we give a hostage to fortune. The places that climb furthest are often those that started near the bottom: poor, ill-governed and unstable. Freshly won democracy and peace do not always last, as Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar (The Economist’s country of the year in 2015) ended up reminding the world when she appeared recently at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and glossed over the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority, by her country’s soldiers.

In 2019 the most striking political trend was a negative one: belligerent nationalism. India has been stripping Muslims of citizenship, China has been locking up Muslims in camps, America has taken a wrecking ball to global institutions. So strong was the global tide that it was a relief to see some countries paddling the other way. New Zealand deserves an honourable mention for its response to a massacre in mosques by a white nationalist. Jacinda […]

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Chief Justice John Roberts

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday said that a better public understanding of how the U.S. government works could make Americans less susceptible to social media-fueled falsehoods.

In his annual year-end report on the federal courts, Roberts lamented that the country has come to “take democracy for granted” since the founding as civic education has “fallen by the wayside” and pointed to greater knowledge of government workings as an antidote to certain misinformation.

“In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital,” Roberts wrote.

Though Roberts did not single out President Trump for criticism, the chief justice has previously rebuked Trump for his attacks on judges. Roberts pushed back in a speech after the president branded a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals “an Obama judge” for a 2018 decision that Trump disagreed with.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump […]

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A study of international prices finds American patients pay much more across a wide array of common services.

Why does health care cost so much more in the United States than in other countries? As health economists love to say: “It’s the prices, stupid.”

As politicians continue to lament the system’s expense, and more Americans struggle to pay the high and often unpredictable bills that can accompany their health problems, it’s worth looking at just how weird our prices really are relative to the rest of the world.