Explaining the realignment of American Southern politics is often a favorite area of study among historians and scholars. A region that was once dominated by yellow dog Democrats, has for the most part continued to expand as a loyal region for the Grand Old Party. Among the earliest and mon narrative among liberal historians and writers is the belief that the realignment in the South had to do with a backlash against desegregation. Steven P. Miller in his new book...

We’re happy to announce that the latest print issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality is available online. The Spring 2009 issue includes a noteworthy study by Alan T. Y. Chan and Shu-kam Lee. In “Christ and Business Culture: Another Classification of Christians in Workplaces According to an Empirical Study in Hong Kong,” Chan and Lee outline four types of Christians at work: Christian soldiers, panic followers, strugglers, and Sunday Christians. Following the classification, Chan and Lee “develop a...

Arnold Kling continued last week’s conversation about the relationship between conservatism and libertarianism over at EconLog. Kling’s analysis is worth reading, and he concludes that the divide between conservatives and libertarians has to do with respect (or lack thereof) for hierarchical authority. Kling does allow for the possibility of a “secular conservative…someone who respects the learning embodied in traditional values and beliefs, without assigning them a divine origin.” I’m certainly inclined to agree, and I think there are plenty of...

In a new essay at The American, Jay Richards explains why capitalism isn’t based on greed. In Acton’s first documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur, Richards along Rev. Robert Sirico, Sam Gregg, Michael Novak and others touch on this matter in making the moral case for the free economy. ...

In his book Elements of Justice (reviewed in the Journal of Markets & Morality here), University of Arizona philosophy and economics professor David Schmidtz introduces the idea of desert not simply as pensatory notion, but also as including a promissory aspect. That is, what we deserve isn’t always about only what we have done. There might be a real sense in which what we do after an opportunity provides a kind of retroactive justification for having been given a chance....

In mentary this week, “America’s Uncontrolled Debt and Spending is the Real ‘Waterloo,’” I offer the well known point that debt and spending threatens our liberty and prosperity. It is ing very evident that it will be up to citizens to demand accountability from their lawmakers, as I mentioned. What has been tried before has not worked. In terms of liberty, Thomas Jefferson declared, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” What...

My response to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson was published on National Review Online: Unlike a certain other Nobel Prize, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel actually requires evidence of substantial achievement. Mere aspirations and lofty rhetoric count for nothing. This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics has been given to two economists, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, who have deepened our understanding of economic governance....

This week’s Acton Commentary: Healthcare reform – it’s one of those causes almost everyone favors, but which almost automatically produces sharp arguments when we ask what it means and how it might be realized. You would have had to be living in a cave for the past eight months to be unaware that Americans are deeply divided on this matter, and that the division runs clean through the middle of munities. That includes Catholic America. Of course, there are a...

Working as we do here at the intersection between economics and theology, the relationship between various kinds of classically liberal, libertarian, Austrian, and other economic modifiers and religion in general and Christianity in particular is in constant view. Sometimes the conversation is friendly, sometimes not so much. Sometimes the differences are less apparent, sometimes more. Once in awhile a piece will appear on the Acton site or from an Acton writer that brings this discussion to the fore. Last mentary...

The Detroit News published mentary on Catholics and health care reform in today’s newspaper. A slightly longer version of the article will appear in tomorrow’s Acton News & Commentary: Catholic America is about as divided about health care reform as the rest of the country. But there are a small number of non-negotiables for Catholics that principally concern any provisions that facilitate or encourage the intentional termination of innocent human life or diminish existing conscience exemptions. These issues dwarf everything...