Political ideologies

March 10, 2014

When Being Pro-Market Requires Being Anti-Business

Who is the biggest enemy of the free market system? The late Milton Friedman, one of the 20th century’s most prominent free market champions, had a surprising answer: the business community. Continue Reading...

January 03, 2014

Becoming Europe: Freedoms Curtailed, Prosperity Declines

“With every passing year, and each new EU bailout, Europeans seem to be forgetting where they came from,” writes journalist David Aikman in a new review of Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. Continue Reading...

June 25, 2013

Perfect Equality and Extreme Despotism

From Main Currents of Marxism by Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009): Marx took over the romantic ideal of social unity, and Communism realized it in the only way feasible in an industrial society, namely, by a despotic system of government. Continue Reading...

April 17, 2013

Think (and Read) before You Blog: A Response to Michael Sean Winters

Over at the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters makes some comments about my book Becoming Europe based on a review he had read by Fr. C.J. McCloskey. Here are the most pertinent of his observations: I know that American exceptionalism lives on both the left and the right, but when did the right become so Europhobic? Continue Reading...

April 12, 2013

A Great Reversal of the Church & the Welfare State

Over at the IFWE blog, Elise Amyx takes a look at Brian Fikkert’s argument about the origins of the modern American welfare state: According to Fikkert, the evangelical church’s retreat from poverty alleviation between 1900 and 1930 encouraged the welfare state to grow to its size today. Continue Reading...

February 27, 2013

Samuel Gregg: California, Illinois and New York Going Euro

In a lengthy interview in the Daily Caller, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg picks up many of the themes in his terrific new book, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. Continue Reading...

September 19, 2012

Samuel Gregg: Mitt de Tocqueville

Writing in National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg weighs in on Mitt Romney’s remarks about the “47 percent”: Ever since the modern welfare state was founded (by none other than that great “champion” of freedom Otto von Bismarck as he sought, unsuccessfully, to persuade industrial workers to stop voting for the German Social Democrats), Western politicians have discovered that welfare programs and subsidies more generally are a marvelous way of creating constituencies of people who are likely to keep voting for you as long as you keep delivering the goods. Continue Reading...

April 25, 2012

Samuel Gregg: Beyond Conservatism and Libertarianism

On Public Discourse, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg addresses the “considerable fractures” that continue to divide conservative and libertarian positions on significant policy issues as well as on “deeper philosophical questions.” Continue Reading...

February 21, 2012

Libertarians, Religious Conservatives, and the Myth of Social Neutrality

When it comes to our view of individual liberty, one of the most unexplored areas of distinction between libertarians and religious conservatives* is how we view neutrality and bias. Because the differences are uncharted, I have no way of describing the variance without resorting to a grossly simplistic caricature—so with a grossly simplistic caricature we shall proceed: Continue Reading...

February 08, 2012

Samuel Gregg: Obama and the Dictatorship of Relativism

“If there was ever any doubt about one of the Obama Administration’s key philosophical commitments,” writes Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg in a new article in the American Spectator, “it was dispelled on Jan. Continue Reading...

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