“Jesus not only sought to bring a spiritual salvation,” says Abraham Kuyper in this week’s Acton Commentary, “but also countered human misery and did so up until the very end.” He fed the thousands and healed the sick; the blind could see, the mute could speak, and the dead were raised. This was in no way just a peripheral matter for him, as is proved in that, when John the Baptist investigated his messiahship, Jesus did not tell his messengers...

Note: This is post #15 in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Secretary of Homeland Security Department: Department of Homeland Security Current Secretary:John F. Kelly Succession:The Secretary of Homeland Security is 18th (and last) in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission:“To secure the nation from the many threats we face. This requires the dedication of more than 240,000 employees in jobs that range from...

According to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the values and priorities of young adults are shifting dramatically from those of generations past, particularly when es to work, education, and family. “Most of today’s Americans believe that educational and economic plishments are extremely important milestones of adulthood,” the study concludes. “In contrast, marriage and parenthood rank low: over half of Americans believe that marrying and having children are not very important in order to e an adult.” Comparing...

What just happened? Yesterday the governor of Puerto Rico announced the island would seek to deal with its $70 billion debt crisis in federal bankruptcy court, marking the largest municipal “bankruptcy” filing in U.S. history. How did Puerto Rico’s debt crisis happen? During the Spanish-American War in the late 1890s the U.S. military invaded the Spanish-owned island of Puerto Rico. After the war ended, the U.S. retained control, making the islands an unincorporated territory and the residents U.S. citizens. In...

The trade deficit has been in the news on both sides of the Atlantic in recent days. Shortly before winning the first round of the French presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron said, “Germany benefits from the imbalances within the eurozone and achieves very high trade surpluses. Those aren’t a good thing, either for Germany or for the economy of the eurozone. There should be a rebalancing.” Just days later, President Donald Trump tweeted that U.S. GDP grew at a low rate,...

Europe mitting “suicide” due in large part to its rejection of its own values, according to an op-ed just published in the UK. Author Douglas Murray is an atheist and no social issues warrior. Nonetheless, he highlights the role that encroaching secularism, relativism, and cultural self-doubt play in the approaching European endgame: Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument. Those in power seem persuaded that it would...

If only there were evil people somewhere mitting evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? These are among the most often cited lines, for good reason, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. In a 2010 interview for Acton’s Religion & Liberty, Solzhenitsyn...

Inside Gherla Prison by Richard Gould (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) The latest issue of Religion & Liberty is, among other things, a reflection on the 100-year anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and the mitted by Communist regimes. For the cover story, Religion & Liberty executive editor, John Couretas, interviews Mihail Neamţu, a leading conservative in Romania. They discuss the Russian Revolution and current protests against corruption going on in Romania. A similar topic appears in Rev. Anthony Perkins’ review of the...

In a radio address on July 24, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the 100-day session of the 73rd United States Congress between March 9 and June 17, a session thatproduced a record-breaking volume of new laws. Despite the fact that the 100 days referred to a legislative session and not the beginning of a presidency, the term has e a metric for what a new president can plish and how effective they will be during their term. For...

Note: This is post #31 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Trade makes people better off, but how? In this video economist Tyler Cowen discuss the importance of specialization and division of knowledge, and how specialization leads to improvements in knowledge, which then lead to improvements in productivity. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video...