Latest Posts

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...
April 20, 2018

Why is Macron courting the Catholic Church?

French President Emmanuel Macron wants Catholics in his country to be more involved in public life. Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, wonders if France’s secular settlement could be under threat: For a few days this month, France experienced a relapse into the type of anti-Catholic rhetoric that, 100 years ago, would have thrilled half the country and infuriated everyone else. Continue Reading...
April 19, 2018

How to be an unapologetic patriot

Today is Patriots’ Day, an annual observance of the anniversary of when the American colonies first took up arms against the British Crown on April 19, 1775. Patriot’s Day has become a forgotten holiday, due in part to the fact we Americans have a peculiar relationship to the term “patriot.” Continue Reading...
April 18, 2018

Is big government a near occasion of sin?

It happens every day: The news tells us of some new government scandal. The executive branch uses dubious powers to circumvent the constitutional strictures of oversight. The judicial branch, in turn, creates law out of whole cloth and styles its invention the “law of the land.” Continue Reading...
April 18, 2018

New York City ideologues get indigestion over Chick-fil-A

America’s fastest-growing food chain has come to New York City. But as Hunter Baker notes in this week’s Acton Commentary, the “company’s success sticks in the craw of some who find it to be an alien presence due to the Christianity of the family who owns the company and their traditional values.” Continue Reading...