Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Conservatism in the United States'

October 19, 2018

Russell Kirk’s 100th Birthday

I’d like to join in the chorus of Russell Kirk memorials that have graced the PowerBlog these past few days to commemorate Kirk’s 100th birthday. Over at The Federalist today, I can only hint at the significant contributions Kirk wrote on behalf of conservatism, sound economics and Christian humanism. Continue Reading...
November 03, 2017

Edmund Burke, free marketer

It’s not just millennials and other young people who are souring on free markets (44 percent according to a new poll) — there’s also a growing disenchantment among some conservatives. Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg explains the conservative angst as rooted, among other things, in the threat that upheaval in market economies presents to the “permanency, order, tradition, and strong and rooted communities.” Continue Reading...
September 20, 2017

Samuel Gregg: ‘First Things,’ R.R. Reno, and the market economy

The role of free market economics in the West should not be off-limits for debate among religious conservatives. As Samuel Gregg writes in a new essay, that standard should “provide philosophical and theological guidance about how to ground free economies—and liberal institutions more generally—upon more solid foundations than the peculiar mixes of utilitarianism, autonomy-for-autonomy’s sake, and pseudo-evolutionary theory advocated by some liberal thinkers.” Continue Reading...
April 24, 2017

‘What Good Markets Are Good For’

As of this month, I have joined the “What Good Markets Are Good For: Towards a Moral Justification of Free Markets” project as a postdoctoral researcher in theology and economics. The project is a multi-year, multifaceted endeavor, focusing on the central claim that “societies with free-market economies flourish because and in so far as the key market actors (states, businesses and individuals) respect morality, and act virtuously.” Continue Reading...
December 27, 2016

6 Quotes: Sowell on economics and ideas

Over the past few decades, economist Thomas Sowell, age 86, has been one of the most effective, yet under-appreciated, proponents of conservative and libertarian economic thought. He is also one of our most powerful critics of the often destructive and harmful effects of liberal economic policies. Continue Reading...
December 21, 2016

Calvin Coolidge on the spiritual power of Christmas

In his many addresses to the nation, President Calvin Coolidge made a point of routinely redirecting the country’s attention to the “things of the spirit.” In his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, he encouraged the country to reorient its vision of abundance, progressing not only in material prosperity, but also “in moral and spiritual things.” Continue Reading...
November 02, 2016

Markets without limits?

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, who is president of the Ruth Institute as well as a senior fellow in economics here at the Acton Institute, debated Peter Jaworski, a co-author of the recent book, Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests, at an event hosted by the Austin Institute. Continue Reading...