Month: August 2014

August 14, 2014

The Jeremiah Option vs. the Benedict Option

The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers, said Alasdair MacIntyre, they have already been governing us for quite some time. About the best we can hope for at this stage of history, he wrote in his influential book After Virtue, is “the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.” Continue Reading...
August 14, 2014

Teaching Kids About Work in a Prosperous Age

Last Saturday was hot and humid in our corner of the world, and thus, my wife and I quickly decreed a pool day on the front lawn. The kids were ecstatic, particularly our four-year-old boy, who watched and waited anxiously as I got things prepared. Continue Reading...
August 14, 2014

Freedom of the Press and the Free Society

In a time when U.S. journalism too often feels dominated by infotainment on television and blog/opinion pseudo-news in print and on the internet, it is sad to see instances of real journalism, seeking to act as a check on corruption in the public sphere, being suppressed by that very corruption. Continue Reading...
August 14, 2014

Platitudes Make For Poor Policies

A platitude is a flat, dull, or trite remark, especially one uttered as if it were fresh or profound. Politicians love platitudes, which is why we have laws with names like the Clean Air Act, the Pure Food Act, the Fair Sentencing Act, and the Anti-Puppy Kicking Act (okay, I made up that last one). Continue Reading...
August 13, 2014

The politicization of life and death and what it means

Many people once viewed politics merely as a form entertainment. We could all collectively laugh at the likes of Edwin Edwards even if he was notoriously corrupt. Many folks in Louisiana embraced the former governor for his antics and not merely for his ability to fix every problem in the state. Continue Reading...
August 13, 2014

Radio Free Acton: The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke

This week on Radio Free Acton, Michael Matheson Miller takes the interviewer’s chair for a conversation with David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English at Yale University, to discuss the thought of Edmund Burke in the wake of the release of Bromwich’s first volume of what will be a two-volume intellectual biography of Burke. Continue Reading...
August 13, 2014

Pope Francis And Foreign Policy: A Voice For The Poor

In a lengthy World Affairs piece, journalist Roland Flamini takes the position that Pope Francis is a “major player” on the stage of global foreign policy. Flamini examines the pope’s travels in the Holy Land and the Ukraine, noting “that the non-European pope is shaping his own foreign policy course.” Continue Reading...