Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'free speech'

September 07, 2020

Jimmy Lai innocent, Pope Francis silent on Hong Kong

A court has found Hong Kong dissident Jimmy Lai not guilty of intimidation. But that does not mean he, or Hong Kong, can rest easy – especially as he faces the prospect of life in prison without any public support from the most important institution in his life: the Vatican. Continue Reading...
October 16, 2019

Corporate America’s bet on China

In Dan Hugger’s most recent post about the controversy surrounding the NBA’s visit to China, he identifies the crux of the issue: “If even the mildest form of expression of solidarity can provoke the People’s Republic of China to such draconian action as to imperil the well-being of NBA players, why play in China at all?” Continue Reading...
February 12, 2019

Camille Paglia: The fearless feminist

True thinkers are those capable of provoking in their readers and listeners the ability to think outside of ordinary life, to look beyond the merely conventional, and to understand that tensions, contradictions, and nuances are part of the process of growing. Continue Reading...
August 24, 2017

When online conformity mobs imitate government coercion

The social-media outrage machine is rather predictable these days. It doesn’t take much for companies and celebrities to offend the cultural consensus, spurring online mobs to respond, in turn: not through peaceful discourse or by turning their attention elsewhere, but by fomenting rage, abuse, and assault on the subject(s) in question. Continue Reading...
August 20, 2012

The Russian Punk Band and Religious Hate Crime

The all-girl Russian punk band, which in February pulled its juvenile, blasphemous stunt on the ambon of one of Russian Orthodoxy’s holiest places of worship, has generated an unending stream of twaddle from so many commentators who betray a deep, willfully ignorant grasp of Christianity and a perfectly secular mindset. Continue Reading...
July 09, 2008

Canada’s common sense

An update on my post about “Canada’s Faltering Freedom” a few weeks ago: Common sense seems to have prevailed up north, as Canada’s human rights commission dismissed a complaint against journalist Mark Steyn for comments made about Islam, while the same body cleared a Catholic magazine of wrongdoing for its comments about homosexuality. Continue Reading...