Jonathan Witt

Posts by Jonathan Witt

March 06, 2013

The Gospel and the Church: Turning Criminals into Co-Creators

I’m just back from the republic of Texas and Acton’s Toward a Free and Virtuous Society conference. One of my fellow lecturers was Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Ben Phillips. In between sessions, he showed me a recent Houston television news piece on SWBTS’s Darrington prison extension, where Phillips and other Southwestern profs are bringing prisoners to Christ, with a plan to send graduates of the program to other Texas prisons. Continue Reading...
January 28, 2013

Jim Wallis, Davos Capitalism, Cronyism, and the ‘New Social Covenant’

Sojourners’ Jim Wallis has been at the Davos gathering in Switzerland and is urging us to be guided by a new Davos “covenant.” If you’ve never heard of Davos, Michael Miller’s RealClear Politics piece “Davos Capitalism” describes the gathering and its unassailable hubris this way: Davos capitalism, a managerial capitalism run by an enlightened elite–politicians, business leaders, technology gurus, bureaucrats, academics, and celebrities–all gathered together trying to make the economic world smarter or more humane…. Continue Reading...
October 22, 2012

Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate: ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’

At some point in tonight’s foreign policy debate between the two presidential candidates, Governor Mitt Romney should send his very capable inner wonk on a long coffee break and press a big-picture truth that otherwise will go begging: America’s strength on the international stage requires economic strength, and our economic strength cannot long endure under the weight of a government so swollen in size that it stifles human enterprise. Continue Reading...
October 02, 2012

Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat

At least Obamacare comes at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Continue Reading...
August 20, 2012

The Complexities of Paul Ryan

Some proponents of limited government understandably yearn to see Mitt Romney’s recently announced running mate, Paul Ryan, as something like the pure intellectual descendent of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Some on the left, meanwhile, will be tempted to portray him as a heartless monster who only wants to enrich the 1 percent. Continue Reading...
March 26, 2012

HHS Mandate Fits Bigger Pattern

Both the original and compromise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren. Continue Reading...
March 09, 2012

Indivisible a New York Times Bestseller

Former Acton Research fellow Jay Richards’ new co-authored book, Indivisible, has climbed onto The New York Times Bestseller list, holding onto a top ten spot for a second week. The book was published by FaithWords and, in an interesting cross-publishing arrangement, is also available in an Ignatius press edition with a foreword by Ignatius founder Fr. Continue Reading...