Latest Posts

April 07, 2025

There Is No ‘Just Tariff’

James Hartley provided a thought-provoking and insightful discussion of tariffs at a recent Acton Lecture Series event. Far be it from me to say he is completely off-base when it comes to tariffs. Continue Reading...
April 03, 2025

Can Virtue Be Taught?

Educating young people in a mass democracy proves no easy task. Variations in location, the abilities and interests of the students, the role of the parents, and conceptions concerning the end(s) of education create much confusion that aggregated metrics fail to capture. Continue Reading...
April 02, 2025

Economics According to St. Matthew

Michael Pakaluk, a Harvard-trained philosopher and professor of political economy at the Catholic University’s Busch School of Business, has written a new book, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel with a Fresh Translation. Continue Reading...
April 01, 2025

What Is War Good For?

It’s a common belief today that all war is evil. This is especially true in the wake of the confusing quagmires that have come to characterize warfare in the 21st century: Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Ukraine. Continue Reading...
March 27, 2025

The Secular and the Dead

More than a decade ago, I had the privilege of visiting Tuol Sleng, a museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that displays in horrific detail the murderous brutality committed by the totalitarian Khmer Rouge, which governed the country from 1975 to 1979. Continue Reading...
March 26, 2025

Severance and the Bifurcated Self

One of the topics of the times is work-life balance. Should you work all the time, like Elon Musk? Should you embrace the workless life of social media influencers? To be middle class is a mix of the two. Continue Reading...
March 25, 2025

Flannery O’Connor at 100

It’s jarring, maybe, to think of Flannery O’Connor as an old lady. Then again, to our eyes, in photographs from the last years of her life, maybe she looks already old. Continue Reading...
March 20, 2025

Pope Francis’ Plea for Migrants and Acton’s Core Principles

Pope Francis’ papacy has been characterized by a consistent emphasis on reaching out to the marginalized and accompanying them with love and mercy. The Holy Father speaks often of those on the peripheries: the forgotten, the excluded, those who interrupt the rhythms of our lives because they require more attention and care than most. Continue Reading...