Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'politics'

October 12, 2018

Jaime Balmes: constitutional politics at the service of conciliation

This article is written by  Josep Mª Castellá Andreu and translated by Joshua Gregor. It was originally published by RedFloridaBlanca and is republished with permission. Nineteenth-century Spanish constitutionalism is usually interpreted as a pendulum swinging between liberal or progressive constitutions and moderate or conservative ones. Continue Reading...
July 16, 2018

How politics becomes religion

In his new article for the Catholic World Report, Samuel Gregg, Research Director for the Acton Institute, argues that many in the world today have replaced politics with religion.  One result of this is disproportionate outrage and scandal over political events, such as Brett Kavanaugh’s recent nomination to the United States Supreme Court. Continue Reading...
June 11, 2018

North Korea and the Trump-Kim summit: Don’t ignore human rights

The changes in U.S.-North Korean relations over the past year have been drastic enough to give any casual observer whiplash: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump have gone from openly exchanging threats of nuclear war to agreeing to the first ever meeting between a North Korean head of state and a sitting U.S. Continue Reading...
Korean DMZ Pamunjon South Korea
April 23, 2018

The decline of Western civilization, redux

A review of Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy by Jonah J. Goldberg, Crown Forum, 2018, 442 pp., $28. Suicide of the West is intended as a “serious” work, which it is indeed. Continue Reading...
March 23, 2018

Love as a tesseract

Earlier this week at Public Discourse I wrote an essay on the dangers of individualism and collectivism, illustrated with literary samples from C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle respectively. I drew the image of an individualist hell from Lewis’ The Great Divorce, citing Napoleon as an eternal exile, not on Elba or Saint Helena but into everlasting perdition. Continue Reading...
February 28, 2018

Black Panther has something important to offer

In this week’s Acton Commentary I examine the dynamics of marginalization and solidarity in the blockbuster phenomenon Black Panther. As so many commentators have suggested, there’s a lot to this film, and one of the important things it has to offer is a valuable perspective on the underlying unity amidst diversity in humanity. Continue Reading...