What is going on in Vietnam? For decades, China and Vietnam have clashed over control of parts of South China Sea, which is rich in oil and fish. Earlier this month, China moved an oil drilling rig into waters claimed by Vietnam. The Vietnamese government sent vessels trying to stop Beijing’s deployment. Chinese ships responded by firing water cannons, which sparked protests in Vietnam. Thousands of protestors torched Chinese-owned businesses and factories. On May 18, Vietnamese security forces moved to...

“The Power of the Moral Law” is the title of an address delivered by Calvin Coolidge at the Community-Chest Dinner in Springfield, Massachusetts on October 11, 1921. Published in The Price of Freedom, the text is only available online through Google Books. Coolidge’s main point in his remarks was to reinforce the truth that it is prosperity not grounded in a deeper meaning that threatens our American Republic. Displaying his conservative thought, he challenges materialism of government interventionists and reminds...

When es to environmental science, we can’t avoid tough science and policy questions by simply arguing from Scripture or Tradition, says Rev. Gregory Jensen in the first of this week’s Acton Commentary. Yes theology and science “have different points of departure and different goals, tasks and methodologies” but they e in touch and overlap.” For this convergence to be fruitful we must resist “the temptation to view science as a pletely independent of moral principles.” Science can, and often does,...

In Guidance for Christian Engagement in Government, a translation of Abraham Kuyper’s Our Program, Kuyper sets forth an outline for hisAnti-Revolutionary Party. Founded by Kuyper in 1879, the party had the goal of offering a “broad alternative to the secular, rationalist worldview,” as translator Harry Van Dyke explains it.“To be “antirevolutionary” for Kuyper, Van Dyke continues, is to be promisingly opposed to ‘modernity’ — that is, tothe ideology of the French Revolution and the public philosophy we have e to...

What is the VA and what does it do? VA is the acronym for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a cabinet-level organization whose primary function is to support Veterans in their time after service by providing benefits and support. The benefits provided include such items as pension, education, home loans, life insurance, vocational rehabilitation, burial benefits, and healthcare. It is the federal government’s second largest department, after the Department of Defense. The VA’s health-care wing, the Veterans Health Administration...

This is what our country e to: warning labels on great literature. I’m not talking about the parental warning labels (that no parent ever sees, because who buys CDs anymore?) on CDs with explicit lyrics. Nope, we’re talking about warning labels on literature. You see, we have to protect our young people from possible “triggers” – ideas, descriptions and situations in books that might make them unhappy or feel bad: It is the so-called trigger warning applied to any content...

Sam Gregg, Director of Research for Acton, is featured in an interview with the National Catholic Register. The interview ranges from Gregg’s education and career at Acton to how Catholicism and the free markets dovetail. Trent Beattie questioned Gregg about St. Bernadine of Siena, who defended business and entrepreneurs. Gregg replied: Most Catholics are unaware of the broad Catholic intellectual and institutional contributions to the development of market economies in general, especially during their early phases in the Middle Ages....

I am not an economist. Truth be told, I only took one class in economics as an undergrad. However, I’ve learned a lot in the past few years, and one of the things I’ve learned is that most people don’t understand economics. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry knows this as well, and explains it far better than I could. In today’s Forbes, Gobry breaks down the understanding of economics into two broad camps: the “productivist” view and the “creativist.” First, the productivist: pressed,...

Yahoo! Finance’s Stock Analyst, Kevin Chupka, recently interviewed Rev. Robert Sirico about the “Cure for e Inequality” and the work of PovertyCure. Chupka begins by stating that “close to half the planet lives on less than $2 dollars a day” and that an alarming number of Americans are living below the poverty line. He then states that despite all the good intentions, decades of charitable giving hasn’t done much to end this problem. Chupka and Sirico discuss PovertyCure’s mission to...

One of the primary themes in the Acton Institute’s new series, For the Life of the World, is the notion that “all is gift” — that we were created to be gift-givers, and that through the atoning power of Jesus Christ, we are empowered to render our activities, nay, our very livesto God and those around us. As Evan Koons explains at the end of Episode 1: “All our work in this world is made of stuff of the earth...