Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Acton Line podcast: Antifa explained; America’s Founders in the crosshairs
Acton Line podcast: Antifa explained; America’s Founders in the crosshairs
Jan 11, 2026 9:09 PM

On June 29, violent riots between alt-right groups and Antifa broke out in Portland, Oregon, leaving several people with severe injuries. Portland is ing a hotbed for violent, left-wing groups. Who is Antifa and what are they protesting? Rev. Ben Johnson, senior editor at Acton, joins the podcast to explain the events of the protest and Antifa’s objective. After that, Craig Bruce Smith, professor of history at William Woods University, joins the show to bring attention to an increasing dismissal of America’s Founders and how some are trying to erase the founders’ legacies from history. The Founders were slaveholders and not without faults. How should we approach this history of slavery in the context of America’s founding?

Check out additional resources for this podcast:

Two more Oregon men left bloody after violent antifa attack at Portland protest

Portland mayor, e under fire after right-wing writer attacked at protest

Ted Cruz seeks federal action against Portland mayor after antifa attacks journalist

The spiritual core of political hate

You Can’t Celebrate America’s Independence While Vilifying The Founders

How to Understand Slavery and the American Founding

Letter to the Editor: George Washington should be honored, not vilified

San Francisco School Will Cover Controversial George Washington Murals

Purchase “American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era,” by Craig Bruce Smith

New to the Acton Line podcast? Subscribe here! We also mend starting with these episodes:

Mourning the Notre-Dame cathedral inferno; Rev. Robert Sirico on education

F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom; The media vs. ‘Unplanned’

Rev. Robert A. Sirico on the reality of socialism; Interview with a Venezuelan dissident

Do you have feedback for the Acton Line podcast team? We want to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]. If you like Acton Line, don’t forget to leave a rating and review on iTunes!

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Christian Stewardship or UN Sustainability?
“’Sustainability’ has e big business, especially at universities,” says Kishore Jayabalan in this week’s Acton Commentary. “If there ever was an elitist/populist wedge issue, this is it, with Pope Francis and the Holy See on the wrong side of it.” So what exactly is meant by “sustainability”? The term originates in 1987 with the World Commission on Environment and Development’s report entitled Our Common Future: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present promising the ability of...
Video: Os Guinness On The Power Of The Gospel However Dark The Times
Author and social critic Os Guinness joined us here at the Acton Building on April 28 (an event that had to be rescheduled due to an earlier encounter with the glorious mess that is Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport) to discuss his most recent book, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times. Many Christians today are discouraged by current events, and left wondering if the best days of the Christian faith are behind us. Guinness answers with a...
Kishore Jayabalan: Will Upcoming Encyclical ‘Squander’ Papal Authority?
In anticipation of the new papal encyclical on the environment (reportedly due out this month, and titledLaudato si’[Praised Be You]), the press is seeking a way to make sense out of information “floating around” concerning the contents of the encyclical. At this point, no one really knows what the encyclical will say, although there are educated guesses. (See Fr. Robert Sirico’s discussion on the encyclical here.) Peter Smith at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did a “round-up” of various Vatican watchers, officials...
EcoLinks 06.03.15
Podcast: U.N. Secretary General Wants to “Join Forces” With Catholic Church? Chris Manion, Population Research Institute Ban Ki Moon, Secreatary General of the United Nations, wants to “join forces” with the Catholic Church to save the planet. Does Mr. Ban actually believe that Pope Francis will endorse the UN’s forced abortion and sterilization programs around the world? Ban Ki-moon urges governments to invest in low carbon energy Damian Carrington, The Guardian Ban also said, with a papal encyclical on climate...
EcoLinks 06.02.15
Cardinal Turkson: together for stewardship of creation Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, Vatican Radio Despite the generation of great wealth, we find starkly rising disparities – vast numbers of people excluded and discarded, their dignity trampled upon. As global society increasingly defines itself by consumerist and monetary values, the privileged in turn e increasingly numb to the cries of the poor. Pope Francis endorses climate action petition Brian Roewe, National Catholic Reporter “He was very supportive,” Tomás Insua, a Buenos Aires,...
Are Catholic priests mainly Republicans and Protestant pastors mostly Democrats?
Farmers tend to be conservative—at least until they retire, when the skew liberal. Those who serve in the Marines and Air Force tend to be Republicans while soldiers and sailors lean toward the Democrats. Golfers are the most conservative sports players while poker players at the most liberal. Those are some of the intriguing findings from a series of interactive charts by Verdant Labs that show the average political affiliations of various professions. To determine the political leanings, Verdant used...
Now Available: ‘The Mosaic Polity’ by Franciscus Junius
CLP Academic has now releasedThe Mosaic Polity, the first-ever English translation of Franciscus Junius’ De Politiae Mosis Observatione, a treatise on Mosaic law and contemporary political application. The release is part of the growing series from Acton:Sources in Early Modern Economics, Ethics, and Law. Junius (1545–1602) was a Reformed scholar and theologian at the Universities of Heidelberg and Leiden, and is known for producing a popular Latin translation of the Bible and De theologia vera, which became “a standard textbook...
How an Ex-Convict Learned to Worship Through His Work
Alfonso was looking for a “fast life,” and as a result, he got mixed up in illegal drugs and landed in prison. For many, that kind of thingmight signal the beginning of a patternor slowlydefineand distort one’s identity or destiny. But for Alfonso, it was a wake-up call. While in prison, he began to realize who he really was, and more importantly, whose he really was. He began to understand that God created him to be a gift-giver, and that...
What Would The Founders Do About Welfare?
es to mind when you think of poverty policies prior to FDR’s New Deal? For many people, the idea of pre-1940s welfare is likely to resemble something out of a Charles Dickens’ novel: destitute adults in the poorhouse and hungry children (usually orphans) eating a bowl of gruel. That impression is likely what we have about welfare in America during the era of the Founding Fathers. But is it accurate? “The left often claims the Founders were indifferent to the...
Radio Free Acton: Lela Gilbert on Saturday People, Sunday People, and the Threats They Both Face
On this edition of Radio Free Acton, we talk with Lela Gilbert – author, journalist, and Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute – about her book Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel Through The Eyes of a Christian Sojourner, which details her experiences living as a resident in Israel; we also discussed the very real threat posed to both Christians and Jews in the Middle East by radical Islam. The podcast is available via the audio player below. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved