Acton Institute Powerblog

Promoting free societies characterized by liberty & religious principles

Letter from Rome: Alfie’s political lessons

Readers in Italy, the UK and the US are probably already familiar with the case of Alfie Evans, the 23-month-old baby boy suffering from an undiagnosed degenerative neurological condition. I’m writing on April 30, two days after Alfie died and one week after he was taken off life support at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, where he had been a patient since December 2016. Continue Reading...

Is there a connection between opioid use and unemployment?

  For the past several years the U.S. has been undergoing an opioid epidemic. Opioids are drugs, whether illegal or prescription, that reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain and affect those brain areas controlling emotion, which diminishes the effects of a painful stimulus. Continue Reading...

Why do Russian oligarchs hide their money in London?

Former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are clinging to life after being attacked with nerve gas in Salisbury. British Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson plan to target the finances of Russian oligarchs in retaliation. Continue Reading...

Unreality reigns at the Vatican

The team the worked on the original Macintosh computer claimed that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had a “reality-distortion field.” As Andy Hertzfeld explains, the “reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.” Continue Reading...