Human nature soon forgets the infinite grace and power of the Christian redemption, and loses herself amidst the figures and adumbrations of the law, the enactments of the Jewish polity, the directions and rules laid down for the early churches.

[…] For since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations, / Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people.

The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts.

Some of these challenges are obviously specific to particular formulas for taxation or redistribution, others derive from more general trends in demographic developments or industrial performance, while still others – such as the tendency of politicians to underresource their welfare state institutions and then use borrowing to finance the resulting overcommitments – are ubiquitous.