Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Samuel Gregg'

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Is the “secular vs. sacred” worldview struggle just another first-world problem? Join us in a discussion of this topic in the AU Online series Freedom and Virtue in the Developed World. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg: Who’s Really Forgotten the Poor

On National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg offers an analysis of last night’s debate between President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. Gregg begins with the assertion by Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post that the candidates are ignoring poor and working-class Americans. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg on the Vatican’s Role in Global Diplomacy

World Politics Review recently interviewed Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg about the Vatican’s foreign policymaking: WPR: What are the main policy initiatives that the Vatican is currently promoting on the international stage, and how receptive are other nations to its interests? Continue Reading...

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...

Samuel Gregg: Islam and the Closing of the Secular Mind

Writing in the American Spectator, Acton’s Director of Research Samuel Gregg says the “enlightened” Western mind can no longer think seriously or coherently about religion: Given the decidedly strange response of the Obama Administration and much of the Western commentariat to the violence sweeping the Islamic world, one temptation is to view their reaction as simple incomprehension in the face of the severe unreason that leads some people to riot and kill in a religion’s name. Continue Reading...

Rand or Röpke?

On his personal blog, author and publishing industry executive Joel J. Miller asks, “What if we dumped Rand for Röpke?” Good question. Miller says that it’s simply unnecessary for Christians to invoke Rand in their defense of the free market. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg: Why Religious Liberty (and Thomas Becket) Really Matters

Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, has authored a review of the book, “Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel” by John Guy. In it, Gregg notes the continuing need for vigilance regarding religious liberty: And yet as Islam’s present traumas should remind us, a religion’s capacity to make distinctions between the spiritual and temporal realms makes a difference to the more general growth of freedom. Continue Reading...

Gregg: A Book That Changed Reality

Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg is featured in The American Spectator today with an article titled, “The Book That Changed Reality.” The piece lauds Catholic philosopher, journalist and theologian Michael Novak’s groundbreaking 1982 book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Continue Reading...

Irony of Ironies: Samuel Gregg on Vatican II and Modernity

Samuel Gregg, Acton’s Director of Research, has an article in Crisis Magazine entitled ‘Irony of Ironies: Vatican II Triumphs Over Moribund Modernity‘. Challenging the incoherence of modern thought, Gregg remarks Another characteristic of late-modernity is the manner in which moral arguments are increasingly “settled” by appeals to opinion-polls, choice for its own sake, or that ultimate first-year undergraduate trump-card: “Well, I just feel that X is right.” Continue Reading...