Jonathan Spalink

Posts by Jonathan Spalink

October 05, 2005

Afterthoughts on the aftermath of the New Orleans flood

Eric Schansberg ponders the lessons that we can learn from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One of Schansberg’s biggest questions in light of the government’s failure to effectively manage the disaster is this: if the government, both local and federal, failed at all levels to deal with Katrina before, during, and after it made landfall, shouldn’t we be looking for other options rather than trying to depend more on a system that obviously failed? Continue Reading...
September 21, 2005

Whining is un-American

Jennifer Roback Morse, senior fellow in economics at the Acton Institute, examines the response to Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of Alexis de Tocqueville. Americans, de Tocqueville observed, tend not to wait around for the government to give them guidance on how to run their lives and communities. Continue Reading...
September 14, 2005

Low Marx for poor memory

Samuel Gregg writes on a recent BBC Radio listeners poll that ranked Karl Marx as the greatest philosopher in history. Gregg reflects on the evils and atrocities that are committed by the political heirs of Marx’ philosophy while commenting that the materialist view of Communism removes any possibility of fulfilling the two greatest commandments; loving God and loving our neighbors. Continue Reading...
September 08, 2005

Josephus and genetic engineering

With the prevalence of moral relativism in the western world, science tends to forge ahead, regardless of opposition from traditional ethics, into whatever realms it deems necessary for the “advancement” of mankind. Continue Reading...
September 07, 2005

Pascal’s blunder: Miscalculating the threat of global warming

In this week’s Acton Commentary titled “Pascal’s Blunder: Miscalculating the Threat of Global Warming”, Jordan Ballor writes on the growing voice of evangelical Christians speaking out about global warming. Ballor responds to a recent article in Christanity Today by Andy Crouch, who compares the current debate about global warming to Pascal’s wager, stating that we gain nothing if global warming turns out to be completely natural and beyond human control, but that we gain everything if we can control it. Continue Reading...
August 31, 2005

For our freedom and yours: Remembering solidarity

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Samuel Gregg says that Solidary gives us a view of a labor union whose “stand for the truth about the human person and against the lie of Marxism contributed immeasurably to the collapse of one of the two great totalitarian evils that disfigured the twentieth-century.” Continue Reading...
August 31, 2005

Robertson’s fatwa

Rev. Robert Sirico responds to Pat Robertson’s highly-publicized call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. “What is needed here, I believe, is a time of reflection. Christianity is not a national religion. Continue Reading...
August 29, 2005

Remembering the Cold War

This day in 1949, the Soviets tested their first nuclear device, codenamed “First Lightning.” The 20 kiloton bomb was dropped in a remote region of Kazakhstan and detonated over a model town filled with empty buildings and animals, placed to measure the effects of the bomb on a city populated by mammals. Continue Reading...