Amid the wide array of quaint pelling Christmastales, O. Henry’s classic short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” continues to stand out as a uniquely captivating portrait of the powerof sacrificial exchange. On the day before Christmas, Della longs to buy a present for her husband, Jim, restlessly counting and recounting her measly $1.87 before eventually surrendering to her poverty and bursting into tears. “Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim,” the narrator laments. “Her Jim. Many a happy...

Yesterday the Bureau of Justice Statistic released the report, Rape And Sexual Assault Among College-Age Females, 1995-2013. The pares the characteristics of rape and sexual assault victimization against females ages 18 to 24 who are enrolled and not enrolled in college, and examines the relationship between the victim and offender, the involvement of a weapon, location of the victimization, reporting to police, perceived offender characteristics, and victim demographics. Here are seven figures from the report you should know: 1. The...

“Every single person on the face of the planet is created in God’s image. Everybody has the same heavenly Father. Everybody has capacity, talent, and ability. Everybody has responsibility. Everybody has stewardship responsibility. I don’t care what dirt hovel you’re living in, in Brazil or Mexico City or Manila. You have a responsibility to be a steward of the resources under your control because you have a heavenly Father who has put great things inside of you and that’s waiting...

Homicide and acts of personal violence kill more people than wars and are the third-leading cause of death among men aged 15 to 44, according to a new report by the United Nations. The Global Study on Homicide 2013 was released last week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Here are seven figures you should know from the report: 1. Intentional homicide caused the deaths of almost half a million people (437,000) across the world in 2012....

Rather than just responding to the advances of modern liberalism, conservatives should consider how they would transform the United States. Over at Public Discourse, Samuel Gregg discusses President Obama’s final years in office and how conservatives should react. A major challenge facing conservatives after Obama will be the breadth and depth of modern liberalism’s impact since 2008. This includes the relentless promotion of lifestyle liberalism at the level of social policy; the easy-money, top-down approach to the economy; and a...

To provide a synthesis of Pope Francis’s thinking on the economy is both difficult and easy, says Oskari Juurikkala in this week’s Acton Commentary. “It is difficult, because he has never offered extensive and systematic reflections on such questions; his pronouncements are found here and there, inseparable from a broader moral and spiritual message.” At the same time, he has said quite a few things about economic questions, and he is deeply interested in economic values and es. Of course,...

Americans obsession with positive “rights” has a significant influence on the country’s economy. Over at the American Spectator, Samuel Gregg argues that despite the portrayal of the United States as a “dog-eat-dog” society where the most vulnerable are left to fend for themselves, the country actually spends an enormous amount on various forms of welfare. In fact, the U.S. is the second biggest “social spender,” following only France. Gregg explains how the country reached this: On the one hand, there...

Most of us would say we don’t like “reality” television, yet many of us have been sucked into some show that purports to show the real lives of rich people, poor people, large families, little people or drunk college kids. In all these cases, the people featured sign on for the privilege of broadcasting their lives in excruciating detail. Now, A&E (which used to mean “arts and entertainment” but it lost the “arts” at some point) is planning a show...

At The Gospel Coalition, Hunter Baker reviews Abraham Kuyper’s Scholarship: Two Convocations on University Life and highlights the significance of the Acton Institute: The Acton Institute does the kind of work that would have been almost unimaginable in a single organization two or three decades ago. Here we have a think tank that teaches economics and political theory to seminarians and other students of religion, maintains an office near the Vatican, and publishes translations of the works of Abraham Kuyper,...

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently released a report on intentional homicide (see this post for more on that report). Around the world, there were about 475,000 homicide deaths in 2012 and about six million since 2000, making homicide, the report notes, “a more frequent cause of death than all bined in this period.” While the rate of homicides, particularly in the Americas, remains disturbingly high, the fact that they exceed deaths due to war is should...