Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'collectivism'

Genesis 1 vs. the Populist Threat

Political polarization is the watchword in this cultural moment. Family members and friends are estranged over everything from Trump to transgenderism. We seem strangely obsessed with the news and even rally our children as public mascots for our various causes. Continue Reading...

Love as a tesseract

Earlier this week at Public Discourse I wrote an essay on the dangers of individualism and collectivism, illustrated with literary samples from C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle respectively. I drew the image of an individualist hell from Lewis’ The Great Divorce, citing Napoleon as an eternal exile, not on Elba or Saint Helena but into everlasting perdition. Continue Reading...

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...

The Politics of Civil Society

At the Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney writes (HT: The Transom), “When liberals talk about community, conservatives are too quick to raise the Gadsden Flag and shout, ‘Leave me alone!'” He goes on to examine “the reactions to catchphrases made famous by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — ‘You didn’t build that’ and ‘It takes a village.'” Continue Reading...

Mass Marketing to Millennials: A Marxist Paradigm?

A recent Boston Globe headline reads: “Marketing to millennials can be a tough sell.” The article relates the differing approaches of Campell’s, Lindt USA, and GE when it comes to marketing to Millennials, highlighting a general skepticism and indifference toward advertising in the target demographic: For instance, marketing materials for GE’s Artistry series of low-end appliances featuring retro design touches, due out this fall, says it focuses on “the needs of today’s generation of millennials and their desire to uniquely express themselves.” Continue Reading...

Acton Commentary: It Takes a Village to Raise a Business

President Obama’s speech last week in which he asserted to businesspeople, “You didn’t build that,” has been getting some pretty harsh and some pretty hilarious responses. In this week’s Acton Commentary, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Business,” I caution against responses that play into a simple individualist/collectivist dichotomy that underlays the president’s message: We all know at some level that we didn’t get where we are on our own, and that we have an ongoing responsibility and dependence on others for our continuing enjoyment of the goods of human existence. Continue Reading...

The Christian Market?

Joe Carter discusses “What the Market Economy Needs to Be Moral” today over at First Things: On the Square. He rightly points to the twin errors of collectivism and atomistic individualism, each of which have been soundly criticized in Catholic Social Teaching, for instance. Continue Reading...

Review: ‘The Great Wilhelm Röpke’

On the The American Spectator website, Theodore Roosevelt Malloch reviews Wilhelm Ropke’s Political Economy, a “brilliant, analytical intellectual history” from Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg. We are extremely grateful then to the brilliant researcher and scholar, Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute, for a concise, penetrating, and thorough analysis of Röpke’s contribution to intellectual life. Continue Reading...