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Posts Tagged ‘Business’

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Back to Bill

In Articles on October 1, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Bill Daniels was never one to back down from a fight. As a scrappy, undisciplined youth, he may have even picked a few of those fights. In high school, as a Golden Gloves state boxing champion, he learned how to fight fair and square. And later in his life—after years spent as a naval combat pilot, a cable television pioneer in an industry that battled many times for its survival, and as a political candidate bloodied more than once by the process—Daniels proved that he knew what it meant to fight for a cause he believed in.

Perhaps no fight was as important to Daniels as the cause of freedom. Twice he put his life on the line in defense of freedom, first against fascism, then against communism, in the Second World War and again in the Korean conflict. Read the rest of this entry »

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Illuminated Giving

In Articles on July 1, 2011 at 10:26 pm

Oklahoma City
“It’s been banned; it’s been burned,” says Steve Green. “It’s been loved and hated. It’s the best-selling book of all time, the most-translated book of all time, and, I think, the most important book of all time.” He is referring, of course, to the Bible.

Green is president of Hobby Lobby, a nationwide chain of arts-and-crafts stores founded by his father, David. The Good Book informs his family’s business and inspires their philanthropy. It is also the centerpiece of their latest charitable project: the creation of the country’s first museum devoted to telling the story of how the Bible came to be, recounting its effects on the world, and relating its message. Read the rest of this entry »

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Duke of Carolina

In Articles on February 1, 2011 at 2:48 pm

As a cardinal flies, it’s only three miles from a modest tobacco farm near Ellerbe Creek to the campus of Duke University. Today, a traveler can cover the distance in about 10 minutes, entirely within the city limits of Durham, North Carolina.

That otherwise unremarkable distance marks the journey of James B. Duke. Born on a small homestead, and interred in the chapel of the university that bears his name, Duke was a man of the Carolinas.

No matter what else he became, James B. Duke remained a man of the Carolinas. Read the rest of this entry »

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Liberty Fund

In Articles on July 1, 2010 at 9:06 pm

It was always a mistake to tell Pierre F. Goodrich you were too busy to read. “What are you doing,” he would reply, “between midnight and 2:00 a.m.?”

Goodrich himself spent the wee hours buried deep in books, engrossed in philosophy. When he had an idea or was intrigued by a passage, he would pick up the phone and call a friend, no matter the hour.

“Pierre Goodrich was not an easy person to understand,” says T. Alan Russell, who worked closely with him. Goodrich had an intense devotion to the life of the mind, going so far as to bring along a suitcase full of books on his honeymoon. Read the rest of this entry »

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Why You Hate to Fly

In Articles on October 1, 2008 at 3:41 pm

Airline complaint one-upmanship is an old standby of small talk—“You had to wait six hours at the gate? That’s nothing! I was wedged between two linebackers and the in-flight movie was the latest from Larry the Cable Guy.” But is air travel really this bad? Travelers seem to think so. One measure finds that customer satisfaction with airlines is at its lowest point in three years; and the 2008 Airline Quality Rating, an aggregation of consumer complaints to the Department of Transportation, reports that complaints were up 60 percent since 2007.

Airlines seem to give travelers fewer reasons to smile. By mid-2008, many airlines had begun aggressive campaigns to bring in more cash through fees. Several airlines devalued their frequent flier miles, hiked the fees to book a “free” ticket, and started charging for checked baggage. New fees were added so fast that Southwest Airlines began running ads touting the fact that they merely had not added any fees.

And if the fees weren’t enough, fares are rising as airlines follow through on promised capacity cuts, trimming routes and frequencies. With fewer seats, passengers have fewer options and face higher fares to match record jet fuel prices.

But it’s not just the airlines. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Economy of God

In Articles on January 30, 2007 at 4:42 pm

Everywhere in the United States, people have more consumer choice in their exercise of religion than they do in almost any other sector of the economy. Individual parish churches, regardless of denominational affiliation, function as independent contractors of salvation in America’s religious free market. Christianity in the United States is dynamic, and American church history is littered with the relics and ruins of denominational change and theological innovation.

The brewing schism in the Episcopal Church, for example, should surprise no one familiar with the workings of America’s religious free market. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Ties that Bind

In Articles on November 27, 2006 at 3:13 pm

Attire, for whatever reason, has always been a favorite frontier for young people to battle the norms of their elders. At my Memphis high school, the boys once objected to the neckties we were made to wear: to their constriction, to their formality, and, most of all, to their impracticality. We raised the great rallying cry of modernity, “They’re not good for anything!” One of our teachers gamely played along.

The uselessness of the necktie is its virtue, he said. It gives us not only the obvious, an appreciation for ornament, but also something far more valuable: a way of expressing our human character that is not explained by our immediate needs or wants. Read the rest of this entry »

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