Public Policy

July 31, 2019

Simon Leys on Christopher Hitchens, Mother Teresa & “The Empire of Ugliness”

One of my favorite contemporary writers is Theodore Dalrymple, whose essays I first discovered in The New Criterion about 20 years ago. He wrote that one of his favorite writers, who also had a pen name, was the essayist and critic Simon Leys who died in 2014. Continue Reading...

July 31, 2019

Protecting farmers or crony capitalism?

Reuters reported today that a large portion of US farm aid went to the wealthiest farmers and advocacy group. More than half of the Trump administration’s $8.4 billion in trade aid payments to U.S. Continue Reading...

July 26, 2019

French-language readers of transatlantic learn of free-market environmentalism

The Acton Institute continues our outreach to the Francophone world with a new translation of one of our articles on the pivotal issue of environmental stewardship. The latest offering illustrates how the free market cares for creation better than government intervention. Continue Reading...

July 16, 2019

BBC’s ‘Years and Years’: Economic progress causes the apocalypse

Scanning bookshelves crammed with titles like Divergent, The Hunger Games, and countless imitators, this is the literary era of dystopian fiction. BBC One entered the genre with its “woke” TV series “Years and Years,” which offered UK viewers the unique analysis that technological progress and economic freedom triggered the apocalypse. Continue Reading...

July 16, 2019

How market forces can help preserve the environment

Many people believe government rules and regulations are the only way to protect the environment. But there are important benefits that properly structured market forces can bring to environmental policy. When the government and markets work together, it leads to effective solutions for sustainability. Continue Reading...

July 15, 2019

Recalling the one lesson: The US-China trade war revisited

Influential thinker Henry Hazlitt argued that the “art of economics” could be distilled to a generally applicable single lesson: looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy [and] tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. Continue Reading...

July 12, 2019

Rene Girard on the responsible use of language

Those of us who deal with ideas can often throw words around without being sufficiently careful about their meaning or attentive to their impact. We can be tempted to use terms to make a splash or win an argument at the expense of complexity. Continue Reading...

July 11, 2019

Why planting trees could be the cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis

You may have head the apocryphal quote, often attributed to Martin Luther, that, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” Continue Reading...

July 10, 2019

Rev. Robert Sirico on Laudato Si

Climate change is a prominent and contentious topic in our current political sphere. Pope Francis offers a perspective on the issue, but church leaders have expressed differing opinions. As Christians, how should we approach environmental concerns? Continue Reading...

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