marvin olasky

February 16, 2024

Public Life, Private Vice in American Life

In his latest book, Moral Vision: Leadership from George Washington to Joe Biden, Marvin Olasky, author of the highly influential Tragedy of American Compassion (and Acton affiliate scholar), examines American history in light of a Turkish saying, “the fish stinks first at the head,” meaning that moral decay at the highest echelons of society inevitably affects the whole. Continue Reading...

August 16, 2023

The Rise, Fall, and Rise of Faith-Based Poverty Work

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) summarized what happened to George W. Bush’s 2001 anti-poverty “faith-based” initiative this way: It started out “with a certain merit, and you hope to God, literally, that you’re doing the right thing. Continue Reading...

June 14, 2023

Bridging the Church-State Divide

In 2000, I didn’t realize until it was too late that my astronomically exaggerated proximity to presidential candidate George W. Bush would make me a target. For example, I had said in 1998 that women volunteers had run charitable enterprises in the 19th century, so women’s entrance into the corporate workforce had hurt the nonprofit world. Continue Reading...

April 12, 2023

The (G.W.) Bush Whisperer

’Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave, ’Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore ’Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave Oh! Hard times come again no more. Continue Reading...

March 15, 2023

Conservative Compassion Fatigue

Part 3 of my series on poverty and the welfare state ended with a brief look at two community associations in South Dallas. As the Washington welfare-reform impasse in 1995 and 1996 dragged on, I traveled the country learning and speechifying. Continue Reading...

January 03, 2023

The 1990s Republican Revolution Begins

’Tis the song, the sigh of the weary, Hard Times, hard times, come again no more. Many days you have lingered around my cabin door; Oh! Hard times come again no more. Continue Reading...

December 06, 2022

My $50,000-per-Person Poverty Dinner

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Continue Reading...

February 08, 2013

Review: Marvin Olasky on Samuel Gregg’s ‘Becoming Europe’

Marvin Olasky, editor in chief of WORLD Magazine, just listed Samuel Gregg’s Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future in his mid-Winter roundup of books to read. Continue Reading...

August 27, 2012

‘We have no excuse for our poverty. We will not advance without integrity and compassion.’

Marvin Olasky, a Senior Fellow in Acton’s Research Department, has an article in World Magazine regarding evangelism and effective economic development in Ghana. There is an effort to teach strategic economic skills to budding entrepreneurs incorporating a wholistic approach, combining not only economic lessons, but spiritual ones as well. Continue Reading...

May 03, 2012

The Tragedy of Dutch Compassion

In yesterday’s post I highlighted a pair of articles that cover the transition over the last 120 years or so in the Netherlands from an emphasis on private charitable giving to reliance upon the welfare state. Continue Reading...

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