A reminder that tonight’s Acton on Tap promises to be another good one. Jonathan Witt, writer and Research Fellow at the Acton Institute, will lead a discussion about J.R.R. Tolkien’s views on freedom, capitalism, socialism, and distributism, and he will look at some of the ways those views have been misrepresented. The event takes place from 6-8 p.m. at the Derby Station in East Grand Rapids, Mich. (Map it here.) No advance registration is required. The only cost is your...

More audio from this year’s Acton Lecture Series. In “Virtue and Liberty in the American Founding,” Dr. John Pinheiro examines the American Founders’ understanding of liberty as rooted in a classical and Christian understanding of virtue. His talk touched on the reasons why George Washington argued that public happiness could be attained without private morality and why John Adams wrote that, “[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only...

Michael Miller at Acton Lecture Series In this new Acton Lecture Series audio, Acton’s Michael Miller discusses why many blame capitalism as the primary source of cultural disintegration. Miller, director of programs and Acton Media, asks: Does capitalism destroy culture or are other forces at work? Listen to the lecture online here: [audio: From Miller’s Jan. 21 Acton Commentary, “The End of Capitalism?” At least on equal par with a juridical framework as a factor in sustaining market systems is...

I’ve long argued that school choice is the quintessential bipartisan cause, with boundless potential to transform American primary and secondary education. Yet, for various reasons (all of them bad), it has failed to live up to that potential—its significant successes in various places notwithstanding. One more anecdote to file away on this es from Rich Lowry at NRO: the travails of Eva Moskowitz in New York City. Favorite quote: It’s amazing what you can plish, she says, when you design...

Joseph Morris at Acton Lecture Series We’re posting the audio from Mr. Joseph Morris’ excellent May 6 Acton Lecture Series presentation, Alinsky for Dummies: His Persistent Influence and Its Meaning for American Society and Politics. As Lord Acton warned that power corrupts, Saul Alinsky — the father of modern munity organizing” — rejoiced that corruption empowers. Saul Alinsky As Morris pointed out, decades after Alinsky’s death his ideas and teaching continue to shape the American political and social landscape. Barack...

I just finished writing a review of Robert H. Nelson’s book, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America (Penn State University Press, 2010) that will appear later this year in Calvin Theological Journal. It is a good book. It is a timely book. There are flaws, but overall there is much to learn from Nelson’s analysis. I found a good summary passage that appears as a footnote on p. 171: The terms ecology and economics...

Lee Edwards calls William F. Buckley Jr. “The St. Paul of the conservative movement.” No other 20th century figure made such a vast contribution to the intellectual force of political conservatism. He paved the way for the likes of Ronald Reagan and all of those political children of Reagan who credit the former president for bringing them into politics. He achieved what no other had done and that was his ability to bring traditional conservatives, libertarians, and munists together under...

This week’s Acton Commentary from Research Director Samuel Gregg. +++++++++ Europe: The Unjust Continent By Samuel Gregg In recent months, the European social model has been under the spotlight following Greece’s economic meltdown and the fumbling efforts of European politicians to prop up other tottering European economies. To an unprecedented extent, the post-war European model’s sustainability is being questioned. Even the New York Times has conceded something is fundamentally wrong with the model they and the American Left have been...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I reviewed a new book by George H. Nash on the history of the American conservative movement: Reappraising the Right By Bruce Edward Walker In his 1950 work, “The Liberal Imagination,” Lionel Trilling famously stated that American liberalism was the one true political philosophy, claiming it as the nation’s “sole intellectual tradition.” Unknown to him, two young men — one toiling as a professor at Michigan State Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) and the...

This is a really intriguing story about a munity beset by an unfriendly local tax environment, “Sand Lake civil war: Move to dissolve es down to taxes.” The village government of Sand Lake, Michigan, is threatened with dissolution. As you might expect, those facing the chopping block are crying foul. How’s this for overblown rhetoric? “This is domestic terrorism. It’s an attack on small town USA. I have a personal anger against these people. Their purpose is not the good...