We have long heard about the incessant flow of America’s best-and-brightest workers to the country’s largest urban centers, leading many to fear the consolidated power of “coastal elites” and the continuous disruption of the American heartland. Continue Reading...
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March 13, 2020
Dashed hopes in crisis? Be like Charles Borromeo
When the Israelites wondered aimlessly in the desert, often they got lost, were scared and worshiped false idols to abate their worries. They abandoned Yahweh, but the Lord did not reciprocate. Continue Reading...
March 12, 2020
End the BBC’s monopoly status
The UK’s exit from the European Union opened a new era of liberty by empowering the British people to control their own destiny. However, state monopolies undermine their newfound autonomy by removing them from key decisions that affect their lives. Continue Reading...
March 12, 2020
Thousands gather in Venezuela to protest Nicolás Maduro’s government
With coronavirus understandably being the focus of most people’s thoughts these days, it’s not surprising that other important events might escape our attention. Consider, for example, the fact that tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on March 10 this week in their nation’s capital, Caracas, as well as other cities to demand an end to the Chavista dictatorship of President Nicolás Maduro which has driven the country into an economic black hole from which it shows no signs of emerging. Continue Reading...
March 12, 2020
Why culture matters for the economy
This article first appeared on February 24, 2020, in Law & Liberty, a project of Liberty Fund, Inc., and was republished with permission.
In many peoples’ minds, economics and economists remain locked in a world of homo economicus—the ultimate pleasure-calculator who seeks only to maximize personal satisfaction from the consumption of goods and services and whose occasional displays of seemingly altruistic behavior really only function as a means of self-satisfaction. Continue Reading...
March 11, 2020
Cleveland church must stop helping the poor or stop being a church: City govt
After being thrown out of a Cleveland church that doubles as a homeless shelter, a vagrant used a pistol to force his way back inside. Unfortunately, the gun-wielding intruder wasn’t the biggest threat to the facility’s survival: Its own government was. Continue Reading...
March 11, 2020
Christian anthropology begins with you! Three texts for meditation
While seeing is believing, being is best. Being who you are is a lifetime’s work. This has been in the forefront of my mind this past month, as each week I’ve been turning out reading lists on natural law, how to think like an economist, and how to think and talk about politics. Continue Reading...
March 11, 2020
Acton Line podcast redux: Samuel Gregg on the life and impact of Michael Novak
It’s now been three years since Michael Novak passed away. Novak was a Roman Catholic theologian, philosopher, and author, and was a powerful defender of human liberty. In this episode, Acton’s Samuel Gregg shares Novak’s history, starting with his time on the Left in the 1960s and ’70s and recounting his gradual shift toward conservative thought that culminated in the publication of his 1982 masterwork, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Continue Reading...
March 10, 2020
William Barr on how to resist ‘soft despotism’
Throughout the recent battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, the party’s drift from liberalism to progressivism has become abundantly clear, aptly representing our growing cultural divide between ordered liberty and what Alexis de Tocqueville famously called “soft despotism.” Continue Reading...
March 10, 2020
John Foster Dulles, the Cold War architect
John Foster Dulles was Dwight D. Eisenhower’s secretary of state from 1953 to 1959. In the tense, early years of Cold War politics, Dulles pursued a foreign policy designed to isolate the Soviet Union and undermine the spread of Communism. Continue Reading...