For a limited time (May 26-28), Ismael Hernandez’ new book, Not Tragically Colored: Freedom, Personhood, and the Renewal of Black America will be free to download. Despite a seemingly endless series of programs, discussions, and analyses—and the election of the first African-American president—the problem of race continues to bedevil American society. Could it be that our programs and discussions have failed to get at the root of the problem? Ismael Hernandez strikes at the root, even when that means plunging...

Since its inception in the 1990s, the payday lending industry has grown at an astonishing pace. Currently, there are about 22,000 payday lending locations — more than two for every Starbucks — that originate an estimated $27 billion in annual loan volume. But payday lenders may soon face some petition. A few of the largest consumer banks in America are considering goingto market with new small-dollar installment loan products, reports the American Banker. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the...

Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joined host Al Kresta on Ave Maria Radio’sKresta in the Afternoon last Thursday to discuss the ongoing crisis of populism in LatinAmerica, and the Vatican’s perspective on the region’s economic and social unrestunder Pope Francis. Gregg notes that while institutionally, the Catholic church in Latin America has largely maintained itsinstitutional integrity, regional leaders–and indeed Pope Francis himself–have an affinity for what is known as “teología del pueblo” – a “theology of the people”...

TodayAmericans will observe Memorial Day, a federal holiday for remembering the people who died while serving in the country’s armed forces. Here are five facts you should know about this day of remembrance: 1. Memorial Day is often confused with Veterans Day. Memorial Day is a day for remembering and honoring military personnel who died in the service of their country, particularly those who died in battle or as a result of wounds sustained in battle. While those who died...

It’s all over but the chanting, which seemingly will continue unabated until religious shareholder activists bring panies to heel. What the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility hyperbolically billed as “a watershed year” trickled into a puddle of disappointment yesterday for shareholder activists’ climate-change resolutions. The chanting began outside Dallas’ Morton E. Meyerson Symphony Center and the Chevron Park Auditorium in San Ramon, Calif., prior to the annual shareholder meetings conducted, respectively, by ExxonMobil Corp. and Chevron Corporation. Real chanting, dear...

Venezuela, though filled with exotic beaches and many natural resources, has the most miserable economy in the world thanks to high inflation and unemployment. For a detailed background on the current situation in Venezuela, see Joe Carter’s recent explainer. Since Venezuela’s crisis took over the news, there has been plenty mentary about the chaos and what could have caused it. Acton’s Director of Programs, Paul Bonicelli argues that politics is to blame. “Venezuela is a dictatorship,” he writes in Foreign...

“Men Without Chests” is the curious title of the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man. In the book, Lewis explains that the “The Chest” is one of the “indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.” Without “Chests” we are unable to have confidence that we can...

Our most recent issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 19, no. 1, has now been published online and print issues are in the mail. In addition to our regular slate of articles examining the intersections between faith, freedom, markets, and morality, this issue contains a new entry in our Scholia special feature section: “Advice to a Desolate France” by Sebastian Castellio. Writing in 1562, Castellio was one of the first early modern defenders of freedom of religion...

The U.N’s World Health Organization (WHO) recently released it’s latest version of World Health Statistics, a definitive source of information on the health of the world’s people. Here are seven figures from the report about life expectancy that you should know: 1. Life expectancy increased by 5 years between 2000 and 2015, the fastest increase since the 1960s. Those gains reverse declines during the 1990s, when life expectancy fell in Africa because of the AIDS epidemic and in Eastern Europe...

With the rise in popularity of social democracy (a highly regulated market economy), Samuel Gregg has some words of warning against the system. “[T]he briefest of surveys of European social democracy’s history,” he writes in a new article for the Stream, “illustrates how these policies invariably induce the type of slow-motion decline that’s turned much of today’s European Union into the sick man of the global economy.” Americans looking to Bernie Sanders for a social democratic answer to their problems...