Turns out that cronyism hits more than just your pocketbook. There’s a good chance it’s hitting your waistline too. That’s the takeaway from this editorial by Charles Lane. You see, cheese is one of the highest fat foods we eat, and our country overproduces cheese because of government created market distortions. Charles Lane points out how price supports for milk lead to an overproduction of milk. We have more milk than we would ever drink in its liquid form. So...

“What life experiences would best prepare Jesus for his later public ministry,” ask Klaus Issler, “for his distinctive divine-human role as Messiah and Savior of the world?” We might think being born into a priest’s family would provide an excellent heritage for the Messiah, which was the life situation for Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer (Luke 1:5–17). Days could be devoted to studying Scripture, prayer and daily access to the temple precincts. Yet Jesus came into a layperson’s family, devoting...

President Obama’s speech last week in which he asserted to businesspeople, “You didn’t build that,” has been getting some pretty harsh and some pretty hilarious responses. In this week’s Acton Commentary, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Business,” I caution against responses that play into a simple individualist/collectivist dichotomy that underlays the president’s message: We all know at some level that we didn’t get where we are on our own, and that we have an ongoing responsibility and dependence...

A short post in thanks to Lee Harmon over at The Dubious Disciple for his review of Wisdom & Wonder. Here are a couple brief highlights from the review: His writing, while dated and in many places relevant only to the most conservative Christian, is intelligent and opinionated, and the translation is elegant. It’s a pleasure to read. Certainly the charm of this book is its antiquated quaintness, while simultaneously uncovering Kuyper as a profound theologian. The translation is superb,...

On National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg challenges liberals on economic immobility: When es to applyingliberté, égalité, fraternitéto the economy, modern liberals have always been pretty much fixated on the second member of this trinity. It’s a core concern of the bible of modern American liberalism: John Rawls’sA Theory of Justice(1971). Here a hyper-secularized love of neighbor is subsumed into a concern for equality in the sense of general sameness. Likewise, economic liberty is highly restricted whenever there’s...

That’s the question asked at the “Economics for Everybody” blog. The answer? A resounding yes: Work is important to God. It’s so important that He put Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it.” God took His creation and assigned it to Adam “to fill and subdue.” That sounds like work to me. So, what does this have to do with economics? The Bible shows us economics begins with work. God demonstrated this with His own creative action,...

Our On Call in munity has been on a journey exploring different areas that God has us On Call in Culture. We have such a munity of people living their lives to bring God glory. Here are examples of people we have seen who are being On Call in Culture in their life and work. Are there other job areas you would like to see us focus on? We’d love to hear what you think! ARTIST “Art is the transcendent...

I belong to the Christian Reformed Church, and our synod this year decided to formally adopt a report and statements related to creation care and specifically to climate change. I noted this at the time, and that one of the delegates admitted, “I’m a skeptic on much of this.” He continued to wonder, “But how will doing this hurt? What if we find out in 30 years that numbers (on climate change) don’t pan out? We will have lost nothing,...

Os Guinness makes the concise yet brilliant defense of the centrality of truth in the introduction to One Word of Truth: A portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn by David Aikman. This short introduction not only offers keen insight into Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but directly speaks to the ills of our society. Guinness points out that much of the West, to its detriment, paid closer attention to the political opposition munism over the moral proposition on which it rested, thereby missing the true...

Earlier this week, Dom Giordano of CBS Philadelphia’s 1210 AM radio affiliate led a discussion of President Obama’s “You didn’t get there on your own” speech to entrepreneurs and small business owners. Multiple callers mended Rev. Sirico’s recently published Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy as a counter to the ments. And this morning, Sirico is slated to appear on the Dom Giordano Program at 10:05 a.m. EST. Tune in here to listen to Sirico...