Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg recently tweeted that his political program grows out of a Jewish religious teaching giving him the “responsibility” to use the government to “‘repair the world’ in the tradition of Tikkun Olam.” While progressive Jews often use the phrase in this manner, rabbis warn equating politics with the faith distorts Judaism. Bloomberg tied his surging primary campaign to the Jewish doctrine in an online video released Sunday: My parents taught me that Judaism is about more...

When students go back to school Monday morning, they will have more protections to exercise their constitutional freedom of religion than at any time in decades. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos issued updated federal guidelines requiring public schools to respect the religious liberty of students and teachers – or lose federal funding. The document has the unwieldy title, “Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer and Religious Expression in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools.” However, it contains pithy truths and robust protections...

When President Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled the plans for his Great Society initiative at the University of Michigan in 1964, he promised to usher the United States into “a new age.” Through government programs jump-started by the Great Society, the country would amass wealth and power for all, wholly eradicating poverty and even enabling “all nations to live in enduring peace.” Johnson promised a materialist utopia. In her new book “Great Society: A New History,” author Amity Shlaes examines the...

(AtlasNetwork.org Photo / Rodrigo Abd) Despite the once promising election of President Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s first non-Perónist leader in 13 years, the country has largely returned to its embrace of leftist economic policies, including recently imposed capital controls and interventionist price fixing. The results have not been positive. Yet amid the constant meddling by legislators and government officials, everyday Argentinians are forging new paths of economic opportunity. While the top-down planners continue to tinker, the bottom-up searchers continue to innovate...

E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web and co-author of The Elements of Style, once wrote a story that aptly demonstrates the folly of central planning. White, a Maine farmer who wrote for The New Yorker and Harper’s, saw the story turned into an animated short, which he narrated 36 years after its publication. In “The Family that Dwelt Apart” – published in The New Yorker on July 31, 1937 – White tells the story of the Pruitt family, which...

The United States has experienced years of record-breaking stock markets and unmatched levels of employment. Yet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presents her country as a dystopia in equal parts Dickensian and Hobbesian, where the wealthy few ground the poor masses into the dust. Meanwhile, an existential environmental catastrophe leaves decent people wondering, “Is it OK to still have children?” Most recently, she took her prosperity-as-affliction message to television, asserting that the wealthy somehow caused 40 million Americans to “live in destitute [sic].”...

Are churches tax exempt as a matter of privilege or right? What does tax exception munities and churches? Christianity Todayhas been hosting an interesting debate on these issues. Paul Matzko, Assistant Editor for Tech and Innovation at the CATO Institute, argued in the cover story of this month’s issue that tax es at a high a cost to munities in which they are located: This feeling that churches don’t contribute to mon good is not mon in America. There are...

Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, writes this morning in Forbes about the relationship between economic freedom and corruption. Transparency International released its 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index last week, and Chafuen correlates these results with countries’ rankings in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. As a general rule, greater economic freedom and lower corruption seem to go hand in hand. Although I was born and raised in a country where corruption, especially petty corruption, had e part of many...

President Donald Trump made history on Friday when he became the first president to address the March for Life in person. As I watched the moment unfold, I was taken aback by a poster I saw held by one of the attendees: “Medicare for All. Abortion for None.” A sticker at the bottom read, “Democratic Socialists of America. Pro-life caucus.” hell yeah bröther /M66zR2d1Xs — Barstool Shop Steward (@j_arthur_bloom) January 24, 2020 At first blush, one would be tempted to...

“Economic inequality is out of control,” according to Oxfam, which releases a dire-sounding report about inequality every year on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The 2020 edition faults the supposed “dominance of neoliberal economics, which values deregulation and reduction in public spending,” and the alleged existence of “monopolies,” for “accelerating economic inequality.” “Oxfam focuses primarily on wealth inequality, because it fuels the capture of power and politics, and perpetuates inequality across generations,” the report states. While...