Author Archives | Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor - who has written 25 posts on Catholic Exchange.


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Impossible Promises on Health Care

Posted on 10 October 2009

It is impossible to increase insurance coverage in America without increasing medical spending.

We cannot save enough on bureaucratic reform and government-induced “competition” to offset the new costs associated with an influx of 40+ million new participants. Certainly the newly…

Health Care and ‘Rights’ Talk

Posted on 08 September 2009

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the talk of health care as a ‘right’ is so vague as to border on willful and culpable obfuscation. I certainly advocate a rich and complex description of ‘rights’ talk, such that simply…

Patients and Doctors: Partners not Adversaries

Posted on 27 August 2009

In the midst of ongoing debate over the scope and desirability of various health care reform proposals, an obvious and critical component of cost management is going unnoticed: malpractice litigation.

By all accounts the soaring costs of health care have precipitated…

The State of the Fourth Estate

Posted on 19 March 2009

The line of supplicants on Capitol Hill has become long indeed. Hardly a day passes without the announcement of some new bailout package or we see representatives of an industry “too big to fail” begging for bridge loans from the…

Guns, Foreign Courts, and the Moral Consensus of the International Community

Posted on 30 July 2008

In a landmark decision that will impact the future of gun regulation in the United States, late last month the Supreme Court struck down a handgun ban in Washington, D.C. In District of Columbia etal. v. Heller (No. 07-290) a slim…

Democracy in Iraq

Posted on 17 September 2007

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, made headlines last month when he broke publicly with the Bush administration and argued that "the mission for us is not to establish a democracy in Iraq, but to…

Material Goods and The Pursuit of Happyness

Posted on 16 February 2007

Will Smith's latest movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, stands as an extended argument underscoring the truth of conservative values. This may sound like an improbable anomaly given the traditional political, ethical, and social allegiances of Hollywood, but the power of…

Recidivism and Reform: Competing Views

Posted on 28 December 2006

Last week the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reported that for the second straight year violent crime was on the rise in the United States. Violent offenses such as murder and robbery were up 3.7 percent in the first half of…

A Monster Created in Man’s Image Debating the Ethics of Chimeras

Posted on 31 July 2006



We’ve seen the image: an animated, hairy monkey dancing around in some kind of silly get-up. It might be an orangutan in a baby doll dress and pearls, or a chimp in one of those red, hotel bellhop outfits, serving…

Superman or Suffering Servant?

Posted on 11 July 2006

The sixteenth-century Reformed theologian Peter Martyr Vermigli once wrote that “nothing may be found in the world so abject or lowly that it gives no witness to God.” This was such a standard doctrine in the Christian tradition that two…

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