Jeff Nichols is a strange director. He makes movies about the forgotten Americans, the white working and lower classes of the Midwest, but it’s only European festivals that really take an interest. Continue Reading...
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July 04, 2024
What to the Abolitionist Was the Fourth of July?
In academia and culture alike, it has become fashionable to dismiss the principles associated with American independence as shortsighted at best and intentionally exclusionary at worst. “Neither Jefferson nor most of the founders intended to abolish slavery,” wrote Nikole Hannah-Jones in the New York Times Magazine debut of the 1619 Project in August 2019. Continue Reading...
July 03, 2024
Liberty: An Ideal Rooted in Our Very Humanity
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” The idea of equality lies at the very foundation of the American republic. Building our social lives, channeling our economic pursuits, and establishing our political institutions on the principles enunciated in our Declaration of Independence unleashed the entrepreneurial potential of our people that created prosperity for the greatest number. Continue Reading...
July 02, 2024
Horizon: A Great Film that Reminds Us Why the Western Died
Kevin Costner returns to the genre that won him his Best Director and Best Picture Oscars (1991, Dances with Wolves) with an insanely ambitious passion project in which he directs, produces, and stars—and into which he poured $50 million of his own money. Continue Reading...
June 27, 2024
Order and the American Culture of Liberty
There is an insightful exchange in the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World between Capt. Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and his friend Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany). Continue Reading...
June 26, 2024
An Economist’s Summer Reading List
It’s summer and you know what that means: it’s time to ice your latte or lemonade, head to the porch, and catch up on your reading. For those who’ve attended Acton University before, you know the staff curates an impressive collection of books for sale. Continue Reading...
June 26, 2024
Health and Wealth with David Bentley Hart
In a fascinating essay at Jacobin, Orthodox theologian, Bible translator, and polemicist David Bentley Hart engages the teachings of Jesus, the apostles, and the early church on wealth and poverty. Continue Reading...
June 25, 2024
Pagans, Gnostics, and Christians—Oh My?
Conservatives, conscious of the past, disturbed by the present, and worried about the future, often ask: Where did it all go wrong? The polymathic aristocrat Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn argued that the “genuine historian” would trace our present ills to the French Revolution. Continue Reading...
June 21, 2024
Decay and Reform in Christian Higher Education
Writing on June 16 at Current, John Fea tells a story that’s becoming too familiar in Christian higher education:
Last Spring, ten Cornerstone faculty … either left Cornerstone or were forced out by the administration. Continue Reading...
June 20, 2024
How the Most Influential Novel Ever Written Has Been Misunderstood
“You have no real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston.”
—Syme to Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four
For 75 years, the number “1984” has represented a numerical nightmare. Those four digits have been brandished in screaming headlines, blaring soundbites, a BBC teleplay that resulted in heart attacks and even deaths of viewers (in December 1954), and the Washington hotline of the John Birch Society, the far-right American advocacy group. Continue Reading...
