Religion & Liberty Online Archives

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May 27, 2016

Authoritarianism ruined Venezuela

Venezuela, though filled with exotic beaches and many natural resources, has the most miserable economy in the world thanks to high inflation and unemployment. For a detailed background on the current situation in Venezuela, see Joe Carter’s recent explainer. Continue Reading...
May 26, 2016

Free eBook: ‘Not Tragically Colored’

For a limited time (May 26-28), Ismael Hernandez’ new book, Not Tragically Colored: Freedom, Personhood, and the Renewal of Black America will be free to download. Despite a seemingly endless series of programs, discussions, and analyses—and the election of the first African-American president—the problem of race continues to bedevil American society. Continue Reading...
May 25, 2016

Social democracy will harm American dream

With the rise in popularity of social democracy (a highly regulated market economy), Samuel Gregg has some words of warning against the system. “[T]he briefest of surveys of European social democracy’s history,” he writes in a new article for the Stream, “illustrates how these policies invariably induce the type of slow-motion decline that’s turned much of today’s European Union into the sick man of the global economy.” Continue Reading...
May 20, 2016

French Catholic Bishop Dominique Rey: ‘Thinking Outside the Box’

Yesterday in the French section of the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, an exclusive interview finally appeared with the outspoken Bishop Dominique Rey of Toulon-Fréjus. Bishop Rey provided the interview when in Rome last month to speak about the current challenges to religious and economic freedom in Europe at the Acton Institute’s conference “Freedom with Justice: Rerum Novarum and the New Things of Our Time“. Continue Reading...
May 12, 2016

Government debt is no trivial thing

How high is our national debt? $19 trillion (and climbing). While that’s an unfathomably high number, no one seems to be particularly concerned about it. No stranger to debt himself, wannabe-president Donald Trump has an idea how to tackle the nation’s financial woes. Continue Reading...
May 04, 2016

The European Union: ‘A secular heaven on earth’

The New Totalitarian Temptation “is the best book ever written about the European Union,” says John Fonte, who just reviewed it for National Review. Acton’s director of international outreach, Todd Huizinga, wrote Totalitarian Temptation based on his experience with the U.S. Continue Reading...
May 02, 2016

What is (and isn’t) Mercy?

In a new essay for the Catholic World Report, Samuel Gregg discusses why it’s dangerous to to overemphasize any one facet of Christian teaching at the expense of a different teaching. Continue Reading...