July 4, 2018will be America’s 242nd Independence Day, the day Americans celebrate our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. Here are five facts you should know about America’s founding document and the day set aside for memoration. 1. July 4, 1776 is the day that wecelebrate Independence Dayeven though it wasn’t the day the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776), the day we started the American Revolution (that had happened back in April...

Last week the Supreme Court ruled in the case ofJanus v. AFSCMEthat government employees who are represented by a public sector union to which they do not belong cannot be required to pay a fee to cover the costs of collective bargaining. The ruling overturned a forty-year-old precedent first set inAbood v. Detroit Board of Educationthat allows government agencies to mandate union dues or agency fees as a condition of employment. Catholic social teaching has a lot to say about...

During her packed June 20 lecture at Acton University, Anne Rathbone Bradley wrestled with plicated topic of crony capitalism. The audience was hushed as she laid out why this economic disease destroys the long-term incentive panies and governments to exercise good-stewardship. Her lecture sparked a lively debate about economic intervention and crony capitalism’s implications on regulatory policy. Bradley began her talk by rejecting the phrase because she asserted “cronyism” is really a distortion of capitalism; in many ways, cronyism is...

Even among freedom minded individuals, classical liberalism gives way to conservative resistance on the issue of money. The view prominent on the right and the left is that money is the exclusive right of the state, rather than private initiative. Thus, the dominant view is that the monetary policy should be the sole responsibility of central banks. They have a monopoly on the volume of money in circulation, credit and interest rates. In 1978, Friedrich August von Hayek presented the...

Imagine: You are in the grocery store, searching for the perfect bag of coffee- not too expensive, but still rich in flavor and good quality. As you are turning away with the coffee you have just chosen, there on the shelf is a bag of coffee with the Fair Trade logo. After an intense internal debate, you return the first bag of coffee to its shelf and take the Fair Trade coffee with a sense of contentment. The coffee farmers...

On this Fourth of July, the U.S. ambassador to the UK has written an op-ed encouraging the government to embrace the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. Robert Wood Johnson’s op-ed points to the special relationship that grew up following our Revolution to strengthen Theresa May’s flagging resolve as Brexit talks lumber forward. “Change calls for courage, conviction and confidence,” writes Ambassador Robert Wood Johnson in the Daily Mail. “And there is no finer example of that spirit in action...

Forecasts of an impending “robot apocalypse” have haunted intellectuals and caused some entrepreneurs to demand a universal basic e. But what if there’s something intrinsic to the human person that cannot be automated into oblivion? At theReligion & Liberty Transatlanticwebsite, Josh Herring reviews Jay W. Richards’ new book –The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines– which makes precisely this contention. Richards, the executive editor ofThe Stream, also discussed thistopic at Acton University. Herring...

The day after she bested a 10-term congressman by 16 points in a Democratic Party primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made an unlikely literary debut: She published an article in a Jesuit magazine burnishing her Catholic bona fides. The story, titled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a criminal justice reform,” appeared in America last Wednesday. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member’s blog offers a personal reflection about an incarcerated relative, cites U.S. incarceration statistics as proof...

In post-9/11 America, the Islamic faith appears to many to be patible with freedom. What we know of the Muslim world consists largely of oppressive terrorist groups ruling their own fiefdoms with an iron grip, stifling the free market and political liberty. However, in his Acton University lecture, entitled “Islam, Markets, and the Free Society,” Mustafa Akyol argued that this is not the whole story. During his talk, he took a deep dive into the history of the Islamic world,...

There’s a lot to process in Paul Schrader’s latest film, “First Reformed.” The first half of the film sets up as a powerful, even brilliant, study of spiritual desolation and the cross-currents of modern idolatry and traditional religion. It is possible to sympathize with the protagonist, even as Rev. Ernst Toller’s desperation spirals deeper into darkness. The plot revolves around the recurring question: Can God forgive us? That is, can God forgive us for our myriad sins of omission mission?...