Outsiders looking from the outside into Europe will probably answer that question in the affirmative, and with good reason. The churches are emptying, the economies are tanking, and the politicians continue to fiddle along. Very few have a clue of how to fix things. Very few, but not all. The President of the Czech Republic, Vผlav Klaus, spoke at a Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Iceland last week. Citing Friedrich von Hayek and Raymond Aron, Klaus has a clear eye...

The Americans brought this on themselves. That’s one ing from around the world as it surveys the devastation following Hurricane Katrina. In what can only be described as callously political maneuvering, Germany’s environmental minister Jürgen Trittin said today, “The increasing frequency of these natural events can only be explained through global warming which is caused by people.” Instead of offering condolences, well-wishes, or prayers, minister Tritten delivered the judgment of secular environmentalists. The Americans’ crime? “A U.S. citizen causes about...

Courtesy of Rev. Eric Andrae, Lutheran pastor Bo Giertz offers us a great exposition of the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) and sums up the importance of the pastoral ministry. “‘It is a great thing to receive a heritage…. It is wonderful to stand in the same pulpit, to learn of [those who have gone before us,] and to carry forward the work they began. Sir…, can anything be greater than to be a pastor in God’s church?'” (Bo...

Rev. Robert Sirico responds to Pat Robertson’s highly-publicized call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. “What is needed here, I believe, is a time of reflection. Christianity is not a national religion. It is does not regard every enemy of the nation-state as worthy of execution. It prefers peace to war. It chooses diplomacy over threat. It respects the right to life of everyone, even those who have objectionable political views,” he writes. Read the full text here....

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Samuel Gregg says that Solidary gives us a view of a labor union whose “stand for the truth about the human person and against the lie of Marxism contributed immeasurably to the collapse of one of the two great totalitarian evils that disfigured the twentieth-century.” Read the full text here. ...

The Census Bureau today released a report citing that 37 million Americans lived under the poverty line, a jump of 1.1 million from 2003. “I was surprised,” said Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. “I thought things would have turned around by now.” What’s missing are the poverty threshold numbers that reveal that a family of four is considered “poor” if family e is below $19,000. What’s actually on the rise is not...

Following the devastation in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, bands of looters are running rampant throughout the city. Things have gotten so bad that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin “ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and stop thieves who were ing increasingly hostile.” According to reports, “Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, clothes, TV sets — even guns. Outside one pharmacy, mandeered a forklift and used it to push up...

Pro running back Warrick Dunn, a native of Louisiana, is challenging every NFL player (other than New Orleans Saints) to donate at least $5,000 to hurricane relief efforts. “If we get players to do that, that would amount to $260,000 per team. I have heard from so many players both on my team and around the league who just want to do something. Well, this is the best thing that we can do and it’s something we should do,” he...

The devastation that we have seen this week in the Gulf Coast region and especially New Orleans is almost beyond our capacity to understand. Our instinct is to do something – anything – to help those in need, but when the crisis is this huge, what does one do? Writing for National Review Online, Karen Woods, the Director of Acton’s Center for Effective Compassion, lays out some ways that we can most effectively use our resources to help the many...

From the PowerBlog archives: Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for mon good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work;...

Like everyone else outside the Gulf Coast (i.e., not a direct victim or a tireless rescue worker, volunteer, or military member there to help), the TV remote has e my panion. The challenges are unprecedented–which is hard to fathom after 9/11. We are all passionately concerned that Katrina victims be safely and humanely moved out of harm’s and ill-health’s way. But that is only one small step. Once the scope of disaster and the need became munities all over the...

Thomas Hobbes once described human life in the “state of nature” as that of war, in which, in addition to the lack of merce, and the arts, there is “continual fear, and danger of a violent death. And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The ing out of New Orleans give us a glimpse of the truth of Hobbes’ observation. When evacuations were made mandatory prior to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, those who were unable to leave...