Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse - Keynote Speaker
The final talk from the 2012 conference that I put on this year along with my friends at the Acton Institute and Center for Cultural Leadership came from Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, the founder of The Ruth Institute. Dr. Morse is, herself, a Senior Acton fellow, a prominent economist (formerly taught at both Yale and George Mason University), and possesses extraordinary skills at connecting issues within social thought that sadly many economists are either unable, or unwilling, to pursue. Dr. Morse's insights that you will hear in this lecture are but a taste of her entire contribution to this field. Yes, as it pertains to the 2008 financial crisis, Dr. Morse can show that our abandonment of the concept of HOME led to an inevitable crisis in "HOUSING". She can also show you why the alleged "cure" to what ails housing is a fantasy if we continue down this trend of slowing population growth ("there is nothing we can do to create millions of 40-year olds, tomorrow"). But ultimately, she is addressing core issues. Those of us who advocate for a free and virtuous society are ultimately advocating that economic actors must, to some degree, function with a moral conscience. "But how can people grow up with a conscience if they have no mothers?", says Dr. Morse. THIS, is the heart of the matter. We have an economic backdrop to the financial crisis that can not be separated from a social backdrop; in fact, the latter caused the former. This framework of family can not be ignored by serious economists any longer. Listen to Dr. Morse's speech, and when you are done, please go to the website of the Ruth Institute. I plead with you to support her cause.
Download Link - Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse (.zip file, contains mp3 audio)