This year witnessed the memoration of the respective births of two champions of Christian thought and human liberty, Russell Kirk and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Both men were born coincidentally in the same time frame – October and December 1918 respectively – in which the “war to end all wars” ceased. The ensuing years, however, gave lie to that assessment – worse, far worse, was on the horizon. But the First World War was the moment the fragile crockery of Western civilization...

Charles Dickens wrote in Oliver Twist that “very sage, very deep” British leaders “established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative … of being starved by a gradual process in the [poor]house, or by a quick one out of it.” If one were to believe a recent UN report on poverty, the fate of the poor remains Dickensian. Orrather, Hobbesian, as UN Special Rapporteur PhilipAlston quoted the philosopher’s ubiquitous description of life as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,...

On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate voted 87-12 to pass the First Step Act. If enacted, the legislation would provide some reform of prisons and sentencing at the federal level. The most significant changes would be the implementation of incentives for prisoners to engage in “evidence-based recidivism reduction programs” and increased judicial discretion in sentencing. The bill now goes to the House for a vote, where it is expected to pass, and President Donald Trump said he would sign it into...

Christmas has surely seen its share of “secularization,” from the cliché consumerism to the countless sub-genre s to the increasing dilution of holiday music to the exultation of any number of other pet nostalgias. Yet even in its most humanistic manifestations, we continue to encounter a range of peculiar odes to “peace” and “love” and the ever ambiguous “Christmas spirit.” Indeed, amid the syrupy platitudes and mere sentimentalism, we see routine recognitions that a spiritual void may actually exist. Among...

Christmas is the most widely observed cultural holiday in the world. Here are five factsyou should know about the memoration of the birth of Jesus: 1. No one knows what day or month Jesus was born (though some scholars speculate that it was in September). The earliest evidence for the observance of December 25 as the birthday of Christappears in the Philocalian posed in Rome in 336. 2. Despite the impression given by many nativity plays andChristmascarols, the Bible doesn’t...

As conservatives consider how to approach issues such as free trade, populism and the role of the market, it’s helpful to look back to foundational thinkers who paved the way for conservatism. “One such ongoing discussion among conservatives concerns natural law’s place in conservative thought,” says Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, in a new article published by Law and Liberty. Natural law was central to the ideas of the eighteenth-century political thinker Edmund Burke, driving him to stand against...

Acton Institute President Fr. Robert Sirico recently joined Ron Paul on Liberty Report to explain why Christians should embrace free markets . ...

France’s “yellow vest” protesters oppose the nation’s crushing carbon taxes on fossil fuels, but a deeper issue stoking discontent remains unexplored. Without addressing that issue, President Emmanuel Macron’s concessions to the gilet jaunes protesters “will certainly not resolve France’s underlying economic problems,” writes Professor Philip Booth in a new essay for Religion& LibertyTransatlantic titled, “Gilet jaune: the uprising of a generation.” Arguably, we are beginning to see the results of the disastrous decisions to set up “pay-as-you-go” pension and healthcare...

In December, the PowerBlog is marking the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth (Dec. 11, 1918) “Why didn’t they tell us this? I never heard this from my teachers.” That’s the late Edward E. Ericson Jr., Solzhenitsyn scholar and Calvin College professor, describing a typical reaction in his classroom when his students first encountered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. The video that follows below was found in the Acton archives. It is from the raw interview recording that ultimately was edited...

Although the word nostalgia can be used to express a bittersweet longing for some pleasant remembrance of one’s past, it is safe to say that this is the time of the year when it is virtually unavoidable to drift into a sustained sense of nostalgia and where its experience is most intense. This is a time when our minds go back to a younger version of ourselves: to the sights and the sounds and the smells of our mothers’ kitchens,...