In a creepy scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds, Melanie (Tippi Hendren) is waiting outside a school to pick up a student. Behind her, crows begin amassing on the playground equipment. When she finally turns and sees them, pletely unnerved – and eventually, as she helps the children evacuate the school, the birds attack. Fifty-plus years onward, there’s a new ornithological thriller but it’s not playing at your local theatre. Just log on to Twitter and watch the...

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Caroline Roberts speaks with Stephen Nichols, the president of Reformation Bible College, about the life and work of Francis Schaeffer, 20th century protestant evangelist. After that, host Bruce Edward Walker talks about Netflix’s new series, “Watership Down,” with John Ehrett, writer, attorney and editor at the Conciliar Post. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics: Buy “Schaeffer: On the Christian Life by William Edgar” Learn more about Schaeffer’s contribution to...

Note: This is post #107 in a weekly video series on basic economics. In the last post in this series we learned that according to the quantity theory of money, if the amount of money in an economy doubles the price levels also double, causinginflation. The consumer, therefore, pays twice as much for the same amount of the good or service. Can we put this theory to the test? In this video, Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution University looks at...

The advent of 2019 has many wondering what kind of world will emerge in the next many years. Predictions of disruptive, technological change, and the transfer of geopolitical power abound. A recent report by the Hoover Institute specifically analyzes what kind of political, economic, and technological trends will form on the continent of Africa, given the shifting sands of our times. One portion of the report pays particular attention to African governance. Given that governance is a key ingredient to...

U.S. citizens today mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the Baptist minister’s inspirational plea for civil rights and human dignity echoed across the Atlantic and inspired millions around the world. In his memory, here are nine quotations from MLK Jr. on work, trade, morality, and love. On international free trade: Maybe you haven’t ever thought about it, but you can’t leave home in the morning without being dependent on most of the world. You get up in the morning,...

Almost everyone has read Letter from Birmingham Jail – a brilliant essay. Just about everyone recognizes Martin Luther King Jr. as a great civil rights activist and orator. Which he certainly was. But this misses the full picture. Martin Luther King Jr. was not only an activist or simply an orator – he was a great moral philosopher. Frequent Acton Institute lecturer, Pastor Christopher Brooks, refers to Dr. King as the “greatest moral philosopher that this nation has ever produced.”...

As we continue to confront a range of top-down efforts to manage and manipulate prices, whether through tariffs, subsidies, or government-directed wage controls, much of the surrounding debate tends to focus on arbitrary notions about “just prices” and “the balance of economic power.” What’s less discussed is the actual function of prices in a free economy, and what’s truly at stake if we forget or neglect it. Most simply, prices are signals for service, giving us critical information about human...

CNN: “The top 26 billionaires own $1.4 trillion — as much as 3.8 billion other people” Time magazine: “The World’s Top 26 Billionaires Now Own as Much as the Poorest 3.8 Billion, Says Oxfam” The Guardian: “World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam” You’ve probably seen these headlines—or ones like them—in articles about economic inequality. You might have even assumed the claim must be somewhat revealing about global inequality. But it isn’t. In reality, such...

No one following the news could have missed the media’s misguided hysteria over students from Covington Catholic High School allegedly surrounding and taunting an American Indian activist. However, not only was the erroneous feeding frenzy – which included incitement to violence against minors – predictable, but its repetition is inevitable. On Saturday, a story went viral that the previous day the Covington kids, wearing MAGA hats, had left the March for Life only to barge into the Indigenous People’s March...

Sadly, it is ing increasingly challenging to hold and freely express unpopular or unconventional ideas in the United States. If possible legal sanctions are not yet a reality, the social environment is increasingly hostile toward those who dare not pray according to the gospel of political correctness. In recent weeks, we had numerous examples of how media-fueled intolerance is slowly replacing the law of the land or, at least, making the fundamental freedom of expression fall by the wayside. Vice...