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January 20, 2014

Martin Luther King and The Birth of Freedom

Acton’s second documentary, The Birth of Freedom, begins with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech and ends with an image from the Civil Rights movement. The documentary, which aired on PBS, explores how the speech is rooted deeply in the Western freedom project and how that centuries-old project is itself rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Continue Reading...
January 17, 2014

University Study: Obamacare Cost West Michigan 1000 Jobs

A new study by Grand Valley State University professors Leslie Muller and Paul Isely suggests that the Affordable Care Act has already cost West Michigan 1000 jobs. Muller summarized the results in a Wood TV story: “Firms are actually holding off on hiring or their reducing their hiring that they were thinking they were going to be doing because of the ACA,” said Muller. Continue Reading...
January 16, 2014

He Has a Pen, We Have a Constitution

On Tuesday, in his first cabinet meeting of the year, President Obama indicated he is prepared to use executive actions more frequently to advance administration goals. “We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we are providing Americans the kind of help that they need. Continue Reading...
January 14, 2014

Explainer: What is Net Neutrality?

In a ruling that has significant implications for the future of the Internet, an appeals court has ruled that the FCC cannot impose so-called “net neutrality rules.” What exactly is net neutrality? Continue Reading...
January 14, 2014

Four Christian Traditions on Faith, Work, and Economics

Through Christian’s Library Press, the Acton Institute has published four tradition-specific primers on faith, work, and economics, including Wesleyan, Pentecostal, Baptist, and Reformed perspectives. In a new video filmed by the Oikonomia Network, three contributors to the series discuss their respective approaches, examining a variety of commonalities and distinctions along the way. Continue Reading...
January 10, 2014

Kuyper on Revolution

From CLP‘s newly released Guidance for Christian Engagement in Government, the first-ever English translation of Abraham Kuyper’s Our Program: What we oppose is “the Revolution,” by which we mean the political and social system embodied in the French Revolution… What we combat, on principle and without compromise, is the attempt to totally change how a person thinks and how he lives, to change his head and his heart, his home and his country—to create a state of affairs the very opposite of what has always been believed, cherished, and confessed, and so to lead us to a complete emancipation from the sovereign claims of Almighty God. Continue Reading...
January 08, 2014

Fatherlessness and the War on Poverty

In addition to reading Joe Carter’s striking by-the-numbers piece on the War on Poverty, and in keeping with Sam Gregg’s reflections on the deeper social and cultural forces at work, I heartily recommend taking in Josh Good’s excellent retrospective in AEI’s The American. Continue Reading...
January 08, 2014

Detroit’s ‘Get out of Bankruptcy Free’ Card

Aaron M. Renn’s reflections on the implications of Detroit’s bankruptcy are worth reading, especially as relate to the DIA, a topic of some previous interest over the last year or so: In the case of the DIA, the city owns the museum and the collection. Continue Reading...
January 07, 2014

The Digital Divide And The Uselessness Of Race

According to a report released this week by the Pew Research Center, the so-called “digital divide” between whites and blacks is slowly being closed by smart phones. Here are the key findings of the report: (1) African Americans trail whites by seven percentage points when it comes to overall internet use (87% of whites and 80% of blacks are internet users). Continue Reading...