Latest Posts

December 05, 2018

The return of ‘Tariff Man’, nemesis of the poor

“I am a tariff man,” said the Republican president. He based his strong support of tariffs on the idea that industries within the U.S. needed “protection” from foreign competition. A vocal opponent of free trade, his view was that America could tax its way to prosperity. Continue Reading...
December 04, 2018

What labor force participation is (and why it matters)

Note: This is post #103 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Labor force participation is an important concept connected to employment. The labor force participation rate is defined as the section of working population in the age group of 16-64 in the economy currently employed or seeking employment.  Continue Reading...
December 04, 2018

A free and virtuous society: Lessons from Les Misérables

Interpreting works of literature is always a dicey task—it’s all too easy to find the conclusions we want to find and turn authors into spokesmen for our own ideas. In these reflections on Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, I don’t claim that what I say is necessarily what Hugo himself intended. Continue Reading...
December 03, 2018

Lacordaire: penitent religious, unrepentant classical liberal

As our Acton Institute prepares for its Rome conference tomorrow, December 4, on the Dominican contribution to “Freedom, Virtue, and the Good Society”,  extraordinary men and women from the Order of Preachers come to mind: Albert the Great, Catherine of Siena, and perhaps the most famous of all, the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas. Continue Reading...
November 30, 2018

Explainer: Congress passes bill to help Christians and other genocide victims in Iraq and Syria

What just happened? Earlier this week the U.S. Congress voted unanimously to support HR 309, the “Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018.” The purpose of the bill is to provide relief for victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes who are members of religious and ethnic minority groups in Iraq and Syria, for accountability for perpetrators of these crimes, and for other purposes. Continue Reading...