The Marxist atheist culture, in particular, aimed to root out beauty, precisely because beauty was a spiritual force for contemplating the divine and for inspiring creative thinking beyond the mindless and mand-and-control mentality. Read More… The late Sir Roger Scruton, the eminent philosopher of aesthetics, politics, liberty, and culture, returned home to his Creator last Sunday. Scruton was famous, among other things, for running an underground university for Czechoslovakian dissidents during their munist regime while teaching them Western philosophy, history...

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He signed “Phase One” of a two-part trade agreement between the United States and China. Here are the facts you need to know. What does the new trade deal mean for both countries? The agreement cools, or at least pauses, the 18-month-long trade war between the two nations. The world’s two largest mit to opening their markets: The U.S. reduces tariffs, while China agrees to purchase a specific amount of goods...

On December 10, 2019, shoppers in a Kosher market in Jersey City, N.J., became the targets of anti-Semitic violence. A man and a women opened fire in the grocery store, killing four people. Just a few weeks later, a man wielding a machete broke into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, and stabbed five people who were in the midst of celebrating Hanukkah. One victim, 72-year-old Josef Neumann, was the most seriously injured and currently remains in a. These...

We’ve just put online the Fall 2020 issue of Religion & Liberty, which looks at environmental stewardship and current problems in conservation from a number of aspects (get over to Acton’s Facebook page ment on the articles). In the cover story, I wrote about the demands for a “citizen’s assembly” to accelerate the agenda of the radical environmental organization Extinction Rebellion. Presumably, these new assemblies won’t involve elected bodies like the U.S. Congress or the Parliament of the United Kingdom:...

Americans celebrate the third Monday of every January in honor of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. However, his message of human dignity and racial equality inspired people worldwide, whether he delivered his sermons in Atlanta or Oslo. Below are six quotations that reflect his deepest beliefs and philosophy: On the source of human dignity: Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls...

In 2019, the mighty German economy, the economic powerhouse of the European Union, grew a mere 0.6 percent. That’s right. It grew just over half a percent. In 2018, Germany grew 1.5 percent. This is not a lot, but it was better than 2019. The German economy is Europe’s largest. Hence, when it goes wrong, things go wrong elsewhere in the EU. As reported in the Wall Street Journal: Germany’s weakness is bad news for Europe, and not just because...

President Donald Trump told the world’s foremost government and business leaders to reject the “prophets of doom” and follow “the great eback” during his speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, today. President Trump gave a forthright call to unleash human creativity by embracing technological progress, energy exploration, lower taxes, deregulation, and the free market. “This is a time for tremendous hope, and joy, and optimism, and action,” the president told skeptical Davos attendees, who mostly sat in...

In his new book, “L’Islam: menace ou défi?” (“Islam: Menace or Challenge?”), Bishop Dominique Rey addresses how Catholics in Europe can best respond to the growth of Islam throughout the continent. While Rey lays out various manifestations of Islam in the book, he chooses to focus mainly on Christianity rather than Islam, writes Samuel Gregg at The Catholic World Report. “Rey is more concerned with how Catholics respond to Islam’s growth throughout Europe.” Islam’s presence in Europe offers Catholics a...

Book sales data is hard e by. Publishers keep their sales numbers close to their chest. The information is valuable. It shapes which authors, designers and editors publishers cultivate as well as which topics, genres and formats they invest in. It reveals the effectiveness of marketing and advertising as well as the weight of a review. In this respect, even the worst sellers provide high quality information. Best seller lists, such as The New York Times, are the products of...

Last week I wrote about the basic economic illiteracy behind of Oren Cass’s case for industrial policy. So basic were the mistakes that I thought perhaps I had misread Cass’s argument. Like the villainous Mugatu from edy Zoolander I asked myself, “Doesn’t anybody notice this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” Thankfully the economist Donald Boudreaux, former economics-department chair at George Mason, writing today for AIER has reassured me that Oren parative advantage is not his discussion parative advantage:...