Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'ObamaCare'

May 14, 2012

Are Islam and Liberal Democracy Compatible?

This was the topic of our latest Campus Martius discussion group at the Istituto Acton office in Rome. Our guest speaker was law professor David Forte, who presented some of the challenges in furthering liberal democracy in Muslim-majority countries. Continue Reading...
April 02, 2012

A Very Funny Conception of Liberty

The recent oral arguments presented before the Supreme Court about ObamaCare’s individual mandate have exposed a profound difference in how American’s conceive of liberty. In the the New York Times, Adam Liptak provides a revealing example: Continue Reading...
March 27, 2012

Does the Vatican think water should be ‘free’?

Not surprisingly, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP)’s latest document on water has garnered scant media attention. Why, after all, would journalists, already notorious for their professional Attention Deficit Disorder and dislike of abstract disputation, report on something named “Water: An Essential Element of Life,” especially when it is nothing more than an update of a document originally released in 2003, and then updated in 2006 and 2009, with the exact same titles? Continue Reading...
March 26, 2012

HHS Mandate Fits Bigger Pattern

Both the original and compromise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren. Continue Reading...
March 12, 2012

Obamacare’s Religious Rubes

The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. Continue Reading...
March 01, 2012

Hugo Grotius vs. ObamaCare

In the seventeenth-century, the Dutch lawyer, magistrate, and scholar Hugo Grotius advanced Protestant natural-law thinking by grounding it in human nature rather than in the divine commands of God. As he claimed, “the mother of right—that is, of natural law—is human nature.” Continue Reading...
February 14, 2012

Religious Liberty or Government Tolerance?

Al Mohler absolutely dismantles Nicholas Kristof in this new piece. The cause of this skewering? Kristof’s “Beyond Pelvic Politics” column in The New York Times. Mohler notes, After asking his most pressing question, “After all, do we really want to make accommodations across the range of faith?,” Continue Reading...