On thisepisode of Radio Free Acton, we revisit a previous RFAinterview with David LaRocca: a philosopher, author, and filmmaker who has released a documentary on Italian fashion designer and entrepreneur Brunello Cuccinelli. Cucinelli has built a pany by creating high-quality apparel, but more interesting than that is the philosophy that undergirds his business and all of his life. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics: Learn more about Brunello Cucinelli Learn more about David LaRocca Watch the...

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,...

“Our Lord was not predestined by his Father to birth where we might have expected him…He was born, by divine design, into a laboring man’s dwelling…Our Lord precedes understanding with doing. He sets the way before the truth.” –Lester DeKoster and Gerard Berghoef With each passing holiday season, we see the sudden manifestation of an underlying cultural dualism, with gift-givers either over-indulging in the material stuff or feverishly guarding their spirits and souls from the cold grip of consumerism. Yet...

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...

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,...

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

What just happened? Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed an overhaul of the criminal justice system known as the FIRST STEP Act. The vote of 87 to 12 included all Senate Democrats and dozens of Republicans. The Act was approved earlier this year by the House by a vote of 360-59 vote, including 134 Democrats. President Trump has signaled that he will sign the bill into law. The legislation was also supported by a number of faith-based groups, such as Prison...

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...

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...

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...