Latest Posts

November 21, 2015

Syrian Refugees and the Arab Spring

We’re having an intense, often heated, debate about the reception of Syrian refugees in the United States. How do Eastern Christians see it? The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, an Archdiocese of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, has issued a balanced and unflinchingly critical statement on the crisis. Continue Reading...
November 19, 2015

5 facts about the Gettysburg Address

Today marks the 152nd year anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Here are five facts about one of history’s most famous — and famously brief — speeches: 1. The Gettysburg Address was not written on the back of an envelope. Continue Reading...
November 19, 2015

How Does Your State Rank For Integrity?

When Americans think of corruption, we tend to think of third world countries where getting anything done often requires bribing local government officials. We tend not to have such problems here; our corruption is more subtle and sophisticated, and often involves state level lawmakers. Continue Reading...
November 19, 2015

Remembering Austin Hill

The Acton Institute lost a great friend last week. I first met Austin Hill at 1997 an Acton Institute, Towards a Free and Virtuous Society conference held in Connecticut. Those conferences were designed to identify young future religious leaders with great potential. Continue Reading...
November 18, 2015

Acton and Burke: For The Conservative Wisdom of History and Tradition

“It was the genius of the English political system to adhere to the facts of English history,” says Gertrude Himmelfarb in this week’s Acton Commentary. What Lord Acton particularly admired in the later Edmund Burke was his empirical philosophy of politics, his refusal to give way to the metaphysical abstractions, the a priori speculations, that had been insinuated into public life by the rationalists of the French Revolution. Continue Reading...