Rev. Ben Johnson is an Eastern Orthodox priest and served as executive editor of the Acton Institute from 2016 to 2021. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including National Review, the American Spectator, The Guardian, National Catholic Register, Providence, Jewish World Review, Human Events, and the American Orthodox Institute. His personal websites are therightswriter.com and RevBenJohnson.com. You can find him on X: @therightswriter.
Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
February 05, 2020
President Donald Trump delivered the 2020 State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the ninety-seventh to be given in person and the third of his presidency. In addition to touting a booming economy and highlighting the heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen and other groundbreaking Americans, the president attacked socialism, in the U.S.
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February 05, 2020
A report on the global impact of think tanks has ranked the Acton Institute among the world’s most influential thought leaders.
The University of Pennsylvania released its “2019 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report” last Friday.
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January 31, 2020
After a bitter, three-and-a-half year political battle, the UK will leave the European Union at 11 p.m. on Friday, January 31, 2020. Brexit returns control of British political institutions, immigration laws, regulatory standards, and free trade policies to its citizens.
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January 30, 2020
A presidential season is a time of policies, proposals, and promises. All will guarantee they will increase national wealth and well-being, but history and rational analysis show that some reforms will hurt the very voters who support them.
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January 29, 2020
This week’s Acton Commentary focuses on a Supreme Court case that could strike down an eighteenth-century statute, borne of anti-Catholic animus, that now locks poor children in underperforming schools. A clear understanding of economics and solid Supreme Court precedent could sweep this relic of anti-Catholic discrimination, known as the Blaine amendment, into the past.
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January 28, 2020
E.B. White, the author of
Charlotte’s Web and co-author of
The Elements of Style, once wrote a story that aptly demonstrates the folly of central planning. White, a Maine farmer who wrote for
The New Yorker and
Harper’s, saw the story turned into an animated short, which he narrated 36 years after its publication.
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January 28, 2020
Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg recently tweeted that his political program grows out of a Jewish religious teaching giving him the “responsibility” to use the government to “‘repair the world’ in the tradition of
Tikkun Olam.”
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January 27, 2020
The United States has experienced years of record-breaking stock markets and unmatched levels of employment. Yet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presents her country as a dystopia in equal parts Dickensian and Hobbesian, where the wealthy few ground the poor masses into the dust.
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January 24, 2020
When students go back to school Monday morning, they will have more protections to exercise their constitutional freedom of religion than at any time in decades. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued updated federal guidelines requiring public schools to respect the religious liberty of students and teachers – or lose federal funding.
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January 24, 2020
President Donald Trump made history on Friday when he became the first president to address the March for Life in person. As I watched the moment unfold, I was taken aback by a poster I saw held by one of the attendees: “Medicare for All.
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