The Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website marked a milestone today: It released its first article in French. While the transatlantic website has diligently followed events in France and published an array of mentators since its launch in January 2017, until today all its articles had been published in English. This denied us access to the 275 million people worldwide who speak French. The Acton Institute takes seriously our mission to take our message of liberty, human dignity, and...

The BBC is renowned for its educational programming, but its most valuable lesson is being presented on a global stage right now. The BBC is facing backlash for doing away with a universal beneft for the elderly and, in the process, teaching an audience of millions how government programs really work. The BBC is severely restricting a benefit that pensioners e to rely on: free TV licenses. The main beneficiary of this decision is BBC executives. Artistic license The BBC...

Later this month, Gateway Editions will be releasing Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization, the new book by Acton research director Samuel Gregg. John Zmirak, senior editor at The Stream, has an early review of what he calls “a user’s guide to western civilization“: Read. This. Book. Even if you must do so by artificial light, or on Kindle, in a noisy coffee shop that won’t allow hunting dogs. Gregg’s book is the closest thing I’ve encountered in...

On this episode of Acton Line, we talk about HBO’s new miniseries, ‘Chernobyl’ and the events surrounding the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine in 1986. Kyle Smith, writer at National Review, joins us for this segment and explains how ‘Chernobyl’ is an indictment of socialism. Afterwards, Aaron Rhodes, human rights activist and co-founder of the Freedom Rights Project weighs in on the Department of State’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights and explains why he’s hopeful...

The debate surrounding David French-ism started by New York Post’s Sohrab Ahmari in First Things is, in my view, less about content — or political proposals, to use another term — than about the future and, to a large extent, the recent past of the American Conservative movement. This debate is not about the benefits of the free market or whether a religiously-based moral philosophy should guide government, but about how mainstream “conservatism” lost its way and what the future...

In our dynamic and disruptive economy, we see an increasing cultural anxiety about the automation and outmoding of all things, leading us to increase our focus on technical knowledge and “hard skills.” At the same time, we see increases in social isolation and declines in virtue munal life, causing many to wonder what might be missing. There’s hand-wringing and finger-pointing aplenty, with both progressives and (now) conservatives eager to blame “market capitalism.” The solution, we are told, lies in variations...

To most people, helping orphans and children in the foster system find stable homes seems like a top priority—the kind of priority that transcends politics and ideology,” says Kate Anderson in this week’s Acton Commentary. “Unfortunately, however, those vulnerable children are quickly losing their advocates—and their hope for a stable, loving family—because of rampant anti-religious bias in American society today.” In the United States,more than 400,000 childrenin the foster system are waiting for homes.Around 4%of children are adopted within a...

Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, writes today in Forbes about free trade and its relation to the notions of reciprocity and protectionism — popular topics in our current political climate. Chafuen also cites the ideas of famed economists such as Adam Smith and Ludwig von Mises, who of course defended free trade but also allowed for exceptions. Mises even wrote, “Free trade is not the elimination of all tariffs,” maintaining, however, that free trade is always the ideal: “The...

The Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website has published its second article translated into French: « Bonne nouvelle, même les socialistes aiment le marché libre! » It is a translation of the article, “Great news: Even ‘socialists’ love the free market (poll),” which notes that the same Gallup poll showing socialism’s growing popularity also finds that the vast majority of Americans trust the free market, rather than the government, to regulate the economy. Translating this into French not only...

We live in a strange age when good Christian men are slandered in defense of men of low character. Still, I would have never suspected to see such calumny on the Acton PowerBlog. Unfortunately, my new colleague Silvio Simonetti has used our site to assassinate the character of my friend—and Acton ally—David French. Simonetti says that French is “One of the most outspoken instigators of conspiratorial theories about the collusion between Vladimir Putin and Trump. . .” Perhaps if Simonetti...