is reporting that Junior Seau, mitted suicide in May, just two years after retiring from the NFL, tested positive for chronic traumatic encephalopathy(CTE), a neurodegenerative disease that has been associated with dementia, memory loss and depression found in many deceased NFL players. Naturally, as more data and deaths point to football’s brain injury risks, there will be more and more calls to action. A fundamental question in this discourse is this: “who has the moral responsibility and authority to...

America’s recent fiscal crisis has been delayed, not averted. Even if action is taken within the next few months to cut spending and/or raise taxes, the day of reckoning will only be slightly delayed since no one is willing to touch the three programs that constitute almost half the federal budget: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. As Collin Garbarino argues, this situation will likely continue because “most Americans aren’t ready to have granny living in the spare bedroom.” Everyone, not...

Record unemployment rates in Europe have been published and they should alarm Americans. Why? Because we are headed in the same direction. Nile Gardiner, of The Telegraph, is quite sure of this: The United States isn’t just gliding towards a continental European-style future of vast welfare systems, economic decline, and massive debts – it is accelerating towards it at full speed. Or as Acton Institute research director Samuel Gregg puts it in his excellent new book published today [January 8]...

I recently discussed the importance of aligning ourselves to God before getting too carried away with our own plans for economic restoration. We should instead seek to supplant the personal for the divine, embracing a transcendent framework through which we can pursue what we already recognize to be transcendent ends. This is particularly difficult in a society that persistently glorifies a misguided conception of the self, and it’s not much better in broader Christian culture, where an increasing number of...

In one of my favorite exchanges on the Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer and Jerry Seinfeld have the following discussion about tax write-offs: Kramer: “It’s a write-off for them.” Jerry: “How is it a write-off?” Kramer: “They just write it off.” Jerry: “Write it off what?” Kramer: “Jerry, all these panies, they write off everything.” Jerry: “You don’t even know what a write-off is.” Kramer: “Do you?” Jerry: “No, I don’t.” Kramer: “But they do. And they’re the ones writing it off.”...

USA Today has a piece today on the HHS mandate battle. What I noticed was not so much the story, but the photo the newspaper chose to run. It’s an AP photo by Derik Holtmann from a rally held last spring, about the same time as numerous other rallies were taking place around the country. Since there is nothing in the story about the photo, I can only assume it was chosen “randomly.” Here it is: I don’t know what...

Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, recently joined Al Kresta of Ave Maria Radio to discuss Gregg’s new ing Europe. Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man and Coolidge, said this about the book: “Gregg spotlights the perils of American progressive arrogance so clearly they can no longer be denied or ignored. His logic is incontrovertible. Every economist, historian, and politician should read ing Europe.” Click on the button below to listen to the Kresta interview: [audio:...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “The Mundane Morality of Les Misérables,” I explore the new musical film and in particular a transitional episode where the main protagonist, Jean Valjean, is faced with a moral dilemma: “If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!” Here’s a performance of the scene from the musical’s 10th anniversary, featuring Colm Wilkinson as Valjean: What we see is Valjean consider, and then reject, an avenue of moral reasoning that would...

“Hell hath no fury like a tax-and-spend liberal scorned” -Me (like ten minutes ago) ————- In the on-going debate between proponents of Big v. Limited government, it can often be too easy to dismiss the other side on partisan, emotional grounds. The Left accuses the Right of possessing callous hearts toward the poor, indifference toward the “infrastructure” of our nation, and a blind allegiance to nefarious, shadowy 1%-ers who pull the strings of Big (insert any word but “Government” here)....

There are more people living in the city of Los Angeles than live in New Zealand. Yet the small country in Oceania beats out the the U.S. in several key areas, such as on the production of movies about hobbits, ratio of sheep to humans (9 to 1), and . . . economic freedom. And the Kiwis aren’t the only ones. Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and six other countries have more freedom to control their own labor and property than we...