After hearing the news that the city of Houston had ordered several pastors to submit their sermons for legal review, many people had the same reaction as Brian Lee: “My response? So what? Sermons are public proclamation, aren’t they?” Sermons are indeed proclamations intended for the public, and most pastors would be eager for anyone — including public officials — to hear them. So what is the reason for the current objection? Mollie Hemingway explains that the true “governing authorities”...

Contrary to current policy, this is not reality. Last Saturday The Imaginative Conservative published my essay, “Let’s Get Back to Robbing Peter: The Welfare State and Demographic Decline.” To add to what I say there, it should be a far more pressing concern to conscientious citizens that the US national debt has risen from $13 trillion in 2010 to nearly $18 trillion today. That is an increase of $5 trillion in just four years, or a nearly 40 percent increase....

Michael Matheson Miller Acton’s Michael Miller, director of the documentary Poverty.Inc, spoke with Bill Frezza at RealClearPolitics. Miller asks listeners to rethink the foreign aid model, which has not been successful in alleviating poverty in the developing world. Rather, Miller makes the case for supporting entrepreneurship and supporting the social and political framework that enable people to lift themselves out of poverty. Listen to the interview here. ...

Writing on September 22 in the Wall Street Journal, Devlin Barret and Danny Yadron reported, Last week, Apple announced that its new operating system for phones would prevent law enforcement from retrieving data stored on a locked phone, such as photos, videos and contacts. A day later, Google reiterated that the next version of its Android mobile-operating system this fall would make it similarly difficult for police or Google to extract such data from suspects’ phones. It’s not just a...

LiggioAlmost 20 years ago I was invited to speak at the celebratory banquet for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (now Atlas Network) and the Institute for Humane Studies, then celebrating their 15th and 35th anniversaries respectively. I was an alumnus of both and six years into the launch of the Acton Institute (founded in 1990). Both organizations considered me “successful enough” to reflect at the banquet on how each had influenced my life. It was an undeserved honor, of course,...

Acton broadcast consultant, Paul Edwards, will guest host West Michigan Live on Tuesday, October 21 at 9:00 am EST on WOOD Radio in Grand Rapids. His guest at 9:30 a.m. is artist Makoto Fujimura, whose 2014 ArtPrize entry, Walking on Water, was exhibited at the Acton Building. At his blog, Mako has written an engaging and thoughtful piece about his experience at ArtPrize which will be the focus of Paul’s conversation with him. In West Michigan, you can listen live...

There’s something almost charming about people in American who champion socialism. Yes, their economic views are naive and destructive. And yes most people (though especially the poor) would be much worse off if their vision for “progress” was actually implemented. But it’s hard to be too concerned when they are, at heart, really just capitalists who like to play political dress up. Consider one of their favorite causes, a $20 minimum wage. In their most recent party platform, the Freedom...

Human trafficking can be prevented. It takes tenacity, hard work, and knowledge of the needs of the people in a particular area of the world. One of the greatest “push” factors (those factors that drive people into human trafficking) is poverty. Poverty creates desperation, and desperation drives trafficking. Parents cannot afford to feed children, and will sell them off. Sometimes people are tricked, thinking that their child will be given a job or education. Women will sell their bodies because...

Despite what is heralded as a banner year for proxy resolutions submitted by religious shareholder activists As You Sow and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2014 was anything but. Even the left-leaning Center for Political Accountability reports most so-called shareholder victories for political spending disclosure were performed panies’ own initiative rather than prompted by resolutions authored by CPA and submitted by activist shareholders under the guise of religious principles. The AYS and ICCR narrative collapses further under scrutiny from...

In your kitchen right now is food that is going to be wasted. Although it may still be sitting in your pantry or in your refrigerator, you’ll eventually throw it away. Milk and cheese will go bad before you finish it, bread will get stale and moldy, and the can of kale will go in the trash as soon as you remember you bought a can of kale (seriously, what were you thinking?). That Americans waste a lot of food...