rades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word– Man” ― George Orwell, Animal Farm We are clearly at a point where we are all to be treated as criminals. Why? Because it’s politically incorrect to name the actual criminals. If a terrorist is fueled by a fundamentalist vision of his religion, such as the Tsarnaev brothers, we are told that their radical roots are “mysterious” or religion wasn’t even a factor in...

Keith Lambert has a riveting first-hand account at his new blog about Cold War Communist informant Herb Philbrick. Some key excerpts: Back in the 1980’s I was more interested in dating his daughter than I was in learning about the man she called her father. Nevertheless because of his poor night vision my mother-in-law to be Shirley pulled me aside and asked me to drive the two of them to Boston for an appearance of Herb’s on a locally syndicated...

Every day matters. This is the very simple message of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God and to live one’s life to the glory of God. You don’t need to be “missional.” You don’t even need to be “radical” (especially since monly means “very different from the norm”). In fact, the Bible does not encourage superlative adjectives to describe following Christ at all. Adjectival superlatives tend to create new forms of legalism whereby...

A decade ago, Virginia Postrel argued in her book The Substance of Style that we live in an age of aesthetics, a period where the way things look, feel, and smell e to matter to all social classes. She explained why the aesthetic aspects of products, services, and experiences are not merely cosmetic niceties but tap into deep human instincts and needs. Many corporations, such as Apple and Target, have used this insight to attract new customers and increase customer...

A study from Harvard University and the University of Utah purports to show that merely thinking about money makes one unethical and more inclined to immoral acts. The Huffington Post reports: Researchers split up roughly 300 participating undergraduate students into two groups. The first group was asked to perform activities that were associated with money-related words and images, and the second group participated in activities that were unrelated to money altogether. Afterward, the participants were asked to make a series...

Say, did you hear about the big Acton University Audio Fire Sale that’s going on now in the Acton Institute’s Digital Downloads Store? 68 presentations from Acton University 2012 have been marked down a full seventy-five percent, giving you access to an amazing range of talks on topics ranging from Christian Anthropology to Corruption, from Abraham Kuyper toAlexandrSolzhenitsyn, from Biblical Foundations of Freedom to Tensions in Modern Conservatism, all for just fifty cents per lecture! New to Acton and wondering...

Once upon a time, America was a country where a young adult would jump at an opportunity to learn new skills so that he or she could increase their options later. They were grateful. Those days are over thanks to a new ruling against unpaid internships. Thanks to an America that fertilizes Millennial narcissism in new bined with the federal government undermining how employers develop their employees with minimum wage laws, everyone is worse off in the long run. Someone...

Conservatives known for being tough on crime, says Richard A. Viguerie,should now be equally tough on failed, too-expensive criminal programs. They should demand more cost-effective approaches that enhance public safety and the well-being of all Americans — including prisoners: Conservativeshould recognize that the entire criminal justice system is another government spending program fraught with the issues that plague all government programs. Criminal justice should be subject to the same level of skepticism and scrutiny that we apply to any other...

Yuval Levin, one of the brightest minds in America, was recently awarded the 2013 Bradley Prize for his work in advancing the cause of limited government. In his remarks on accepting the prize, Levin explains the connection between conservatism and the virtue of gratitude: To my mind, conservatism is gratitude. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage...

An apocryphal quote often (incorrectly it seems) attributed to John Maynard Keynes goes something like, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Eliot Ness, as portrayed by Kevin Costner in The Untouchables, answers a reporter’s question about the lawman’s plans once Prohibition is repealed: “I think I’ll have a drink.” The point of these quotations, though fictional, is to draw attention to the virtue of intellectual honesty. For real-world, verifiable intellectual honesty one can...