Month: May 2014

May 09, 2014

Samuel Gregg: Indivisibility Of Religious Liberty, Economic Freedom

Sam Gregg, Acton’s director of research, makes the case that limiting religious liberty also infringes upon economic growth in The American Spectator. Gregg uses history to illustrate the point. Unjust restrictions on religious liberty often come in the form of limiting the ability of members of particular faiths to participate fully in public life. Continue Reading...
May 08, 2014

Deirdre McCloskey on Ethics and Rhetoric in the ‘Great Enrichment’

In a marvelous speech on the origins of economic freedom (and its subsequent fruits), Deirdre McCloskey aptly crystallizes the deeper implications of her work on bourgeois virtues and bourgeois dignity. For example, though many doubted that those in once-socialistic India would come to see markets favorably, eventually those attitudes changed, and with it came prosperity. Continue Reading...
May 08, 2014

An Open Letter Regarding Greece v. Galloway

Katherine Stewart is most unhappy about the recent Supreme Court decision, Greece v. Galloway. The Court upheld the right of the town of Greece, New York, to being town hall meetings with prayer, so long as no one was coerced into participating. Continue Reading...
May 07, 2014

Is Mass Incarceration the New Eugenics?

“Has the War on Drugs revived the 19th Century progressive crusade against ‘degenerates’?” asks Anthony Bradley in the second of this week’s Acton Commentary. The United States currently has over 2.3 million prisoners incarcerated in federal, state, and local jails around the country. Continue Reading...
May 07, 2014

Poverty, Justice, and Christian Love

“We have replaced charity with humanitarianism, says Michael Matheson Miller in the first of this week’s Acton Commentary, “a hollowed-out secular and materialist vision of Christian love.” Concern for the poor is at the heart of Christianity. Continue Reading...
May 07, 2014

Explainer: Boko Haram and the Kidnapped Christian Girls

What is going on with the mass kidnappings of children in Nigeria? During the night of April 16, dozens of armed men from the terrorist group Boko Haram captured over 300 Christian girls aged 12 to 15 who were sleeping in dormitories at Chibok Government Girls Secondary School in northeast Nigeria. Continue Reading...