We’ve seen a drastic shift in the social habits and behaviors of Americans, whether in work, education, or family life. Yet with an ever increasing range of “nontraditional” routes to success and stability, social scientists have begun to see how one particular pattern bears fruit. Back in2009, the Brookings Institute’s Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins pointed us to “the success sequence”: a formula that involves (1) graduating from high school, (2) working full-time, and (3) waiting until marriage to have...

Matthew Sanders and Fr. Ezra Sullivan, O.P. facilitate moral discussion with entrepreneurs and academics. Matthew Harvey Sanders, a former seminarian turned successful technology munications entrepreneur, has sought to fuse deep theological and moral convictions with his natural talent and contagious pioneering spirit. His brain child: Humanity 2.0, a self-described “human progress accelerator” showcased last May 9 at a forum held inside Vatican walls. According to Sanders’s web site, Humanity 2.0 is built on Thomas Aquinas’s precepts for human salvation, namely,...

Aspirations to socialism and social democracy appear to be gaining traction in much of America, especially among young Americans. People are often fuzzy about what they mean by terms like “socialism.” Sometimes it seems to be a type of aspirational outlook. On other occasions, it involves specific policy-proposals. In yet other instances, it’s bination of both. The effect is often to make socialism a harder target to critique. The good news is that we’re been here before. Some of the...

After almost twenty years in Rome, I’ve learned not to insist too much on the Vatican reading the USA with any kind of accuracy, so I usually don’t feel the need ment on every little ing from the Roman Curia. It would take up way too much time and make me grumpier than I already am. But there are times when something must be said. August, for example, when you’re one of the few non-tourists around and nothing else is...

Democratic presidential primary contender Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have unveiled a plan to cap credit-card interest rates at 15%: Under the “Loan Shark Prevention Act,” the annual percentage rate applicable to any extension of credit would not be allowed surpass 15% on “unpaid balances, inclusive of all finance charges” or “the maximum rate permitted by the laws of the State in which the consumer resides.” Consumer debt, and credit card debt in particular, is something many Americans...

In the academic world there are several well-known “twoness theses”, says Acton research fellow Andrew McGinnis, arguments by scholars that there are in one historical person two identifiable and contradictory lines of thought that warrant depicting the individual as divided. It seems that anyone who writes and publishes enough material will be susceptible to a twoness thesis. In some ways it is a mark that you have made it as an author. It means you have published, lectured, or preached...

On this episode, National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg speaks about his latest book, “Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Nationalism, Populism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy.” Jonah will also be speaking at our ing annual conference in Grand Rapids, Acton University, and you can still register to hear him during the plenary dinner on Wednesday, June 19. After that, James Patterson, professor of politics at Ave Maria University, joins us to talk about the legacy...

What do President Donald J. Trump and Ronald Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law School, have mon? At first glance, nothing. However, a careful reading of recent news reveals that these two men were victims of a political trend that has engulfed American society and has been turning the land of freedom into a grotesque experiment of authoritarianism. Let us start with Sullivan. A black law professor occupying a senior position in one of the most prestigious law schools in...

In a recent article at City Journal, Discovery Institute Fellow, Christopher Rufo says: Over the past few years, Seattle has e a dumping ground for millions of pounds of garbage, needles, feces, and biohazardous waste, largely emanating from the hundreds of homeless encampments that have sprouted across the city… Last year saw a 400 percent increase in HIV infections among mostly homeless addicts and prostitutes in the city’s northern corridor. Public-health officials are sounding the alarms about the return of...

The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class remains stagnant. That’s the story often told by those plain about inequality in America. But is it true? Has economic progress in America been shared widely or captured by only the rich? As economist Russ Roberts explains, the standard story of stagnating wages takes snapshots of one set of people in the past pares them to an entirely different set of people in the present. But when you...