Aristotle asked what made the good life? Was it pleasure, material wealth, honor, or virtue? He argued that while pleasure, wealth, and honor were a part of a good life and human happiness, they could not constitute it. Pleasure is fleeting, wealth is always always acquired for the sake of something else–a big house, a nice car, influence –and es from other people and can be taken away from you. Real human happiness and a good life could only obtained...

If Dean Dettloff’s “The Catholic Case for Communism” were intended to be thought-provoking, it raises only one question: Why did America magazine facilitate this mendacious PR exercise? Editor Fr. Matt Malone, S.J.. felt a need to explain “Why we published an essay sympathetic munism.” (Read our analysis of the original article here.) Fr. Malone likened the article to the magazine bashing Senator Joe McCarthy, which he said took place after America “spent much of the previous 50 years loudly munism.”...

That Brazil experienced a surprising political movement and elected a right-wing government after decades of a democratic socialist regime, many people already know. However, a political movement is not enough to change the future of a nation. The reality is that Brazil is missing the most important element needed to root out an ideology of tyranny: an intellectual movement. The lack of a right-wing intellectual movement can cause dangerous consequences in Brazil. In the book The Intellectuals and Socialism, Friedrich...

Over the past five years some welfare advocates have been promoting an eye-opening claim: more than 3 million U.S. households—including 1.65 million households with children—are living on less than $2 per person, per day. That sounds horrific, and it is: horrifically misleading. New research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) finds that more than 90 percent of the 3.6 million non-homeless that had previously been classified as living in extreme poverty were misclassified. Shockingly, more than half...

Newly elected UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson eliminated half of Theresa May’s Cabinet members during his first day on the job. That es as Johnson presents a unique vision of economic liberty at home and independence from the European Union, writes Rev. Richard Turnbull in a new essay posted at the Acton Institute’sReligion & Liberty Transatlanticwebsite. Rev. Turnbull notes Johnson’s mitment to economic liberty, a view that has not been so strongly embraced since the time of Margaret Thatcher. After...

Agriculture is a way of life for the people of Sugauli Birta, a small village in Nepal. But while farmers invest much of their time and energy in their crops, they often spendlong hours traveling across the region to have their grain and rice ground by regional mills. Such journeys are a drain on productivity and opportunity, diverting attention and resources away from their land, families, munity. Fortunately, a local entrepreneur, Lorik Prasad Yadav, had an innovative idea that would...

Americans claim to hate fraud and corruption. Yet we also tend to despise and discourage those who “snitch” and expose such crimes. How do we reconcile these contradictory positions? Today is “National Whistleblower Appreciation Day,” an observance to celebrate people e forward to raise the alarm about a problem within government or a public organization. In honor of the day I mend watching this video by Kelly Richmond Pope, an accounting professor turned documentary filmmaker, who considers why we hate...

In a newly released interview, senior editor at First Things, Mark Baulerein, sits down with Samuel Gregg to discuss his new book, Faith, Reason, and the Struggle for Western Civilization. Gregg discusses the relationship between reason and faith among other topics that he addresses in his book. Gregg states: One of the things I try to argue in this book is that if you want to understand a civilization that has taken things like liberty, rule of law, creativity, justice,...

The Acton Institute continues our outreach to the Francophone world with a new translation of one of our articles on the pivotal issue of environmental stewardship. The latest offering illustrates how the free market cares for creation better than government intervention. Our friend Benoît H. Perringraciously translated Joseph Sunde’s article “Free market environmentalism: Conserving and collaborating with nature”; the resultant “Une écologie de marché pour collaborer avec la nature” may be read at Acton’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website. Sunde...

What just happened? Yesterday the House of Representatives passed a passed a two-year budget and an agreement to once again raise the debt limit. The bill, known as the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019, is expected to be passed by the Senate next week. What does the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 do? The legislation amends the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to establish a congressional budget for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The main actions...