Frank Capra and Ayn Rand are two names not often mentioned together. Yet the cheery director of Capra-corn and the dour novelist who created Objectivism have more mon than you might imagine. Both were immigrants who made their names in Hollywood. Both were screenwriters and employees of the film studio RKO Pictures. And during the last half of the 1940s, both created works of enduring cult appeal, Capra with his filmIt’s a Wonderful Lifeand Rand with her novelThe Fountainhead. The...

Patrick Brennan graciously noted my engagement with his piece on subsidiarity, charitably calling it “substantive.” He takes issue, however, with my “pace Brennan.” He rightly responds that “the very point of the book to which my chapter is a contribution is a parative’ perspective on subsidiarity.” He continues, “My assigned task in writing the chapter was to tell the what subsidiarity means in Catholic social doctrine, period.” To clarify, it seems to me that Brennan is quite ably articulating and...

Acton’s Director of Media, Michael Matheson Miller, discusses the current state of American thought on state, Church, family and liberty in Legatus Magazine. He focuses on the work of two Frenchmen: Alexis de Tocqueville and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Many of the differences can be boiled down to what we mean munity. Rousseau’s vision munity is what the sociologist Robert Nisbet called the munity.” For Rousseau, the two main elements of society are the individual and the state. All other groups...

Now that we know what the fiscal cliff is all about, what are the plans for dealing with it? Below are the four approaches that have been proposed: The Democrats’ Plan Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner offered the White House’s fiscal cliff proposal to Republicans in the last week of November. Although the proposal wasn’t released to the public, news reports say it was basically a reprise of Obama’s most recent budget request and contained the following items: • End the...

Acclaimed and plished, Dave Brubeck died December 5 at the age of 91. He is best known as a poser, who once said Duke Ellington was his mentor. He was known to cancel appearances if his racially-integrated band was asked to leave out non-white members. He was an ambassador of sorts, as well: “Jazz represents freedom, freedom musically and politically,” he says. He notes that his tour “to show how important freedom and democracy are” targeted countries near the then-Soviet...

Groberg Films has produced “First Freedom: the Fight for Religious Liberty”, which will be airing on local PBS stations during the month of December. The film is described as portraying the “radical” break America’s Founding Fathers made from religion-by-law to a society that depended upon the morality of its citizenry. Noting that this was a “fundamental shift in human history”, the film seeks to portray the establishment of freedom of religion as a fundamental human right. A preview of the...

Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien, Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, talks about the need for vigilance in defending religious liberty around the world. ...

At some point everyone has heard an idea being discussed in Washington, D.C. and thought or said, “That’s insane.” Americans generally recognize there is, more often than not, something not quite right about inside-the-Beltway thinking. But to those who have never lived or worked in the D.C. area, let me tell you: You don’t know the half of it. Think of your craziest uncle, the one who when you visit for Thanksgiving has some pet theory about how to fix...

Celebrated fiscal policy scholar Ed Asner, best known for pretending to be a television news producer on the 1970’s classic The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is the narrator of a new “educational” cartoon produced by a Teachers Union in California called “Tax the Rich.” Where to begin! This video was produced with the intent to indoctrinate children with an anti-capitalistic understanding of everything from levels of taxation to how wealth is created to the relationship between a free-born citizen and...

(Via: The American Catholic) ...