Tuesday

Speaking of Ayn Rand (see yesterday's Rambling), I think I found another Catholic libertarian: Jay Wesley Richards. He doesn't call himself a libertarian in "Why Libertarians Need God," but he has clearly spent a lot of time in the halls of Rothbard and von Mises, thought about them, and has sympathy for their ideas. He's also a convert who has appeared on one of my favorite shows, The Journey Home. I may have to buy his book, The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom that Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot.

Several books ably explore how Tolkien's Catholic faith informed his fiction. None until now have centered on how his passion for liberty and limited government also shaped his work, or how this passion grew directly from his theological vision of man and creation. The Hobbit Party fills this void.