As Americans contemplate a “Green New Deal” and British schoolchildren skip school by the thousand to demand (more) government action on climate change, a little-noticed op-ed gives us a glimpse into a genuine dystopia. The author warns that this nightmare scenario will not unfold “The Day After Tomorrow” but has already taken place, for years, in the squalid homes and empty stores of socialist Venezuela. In the West, the stereotype of a Christian crackpot warning “The End is Near” on...

Alright, I’ll confess: I am often accused of being a miser on St. Valentine’s Day. This is because I usually buy three roses for my Italian wife. Never a dozen like everyone else. While devoted to the Trinity, accepting the number 3 as a true sign of God’s perfect unity and love, and while I get a pass from my religious-minded and economically sensitive spouse, my wee rose acquisition is not just a test of love but it is also...

President Trump said in a press conference Tuesday that he may postpone the March 1st deadline for the extension of tariffs on Chinese goods as US trade representatives are in China working on a trade agreement. Trump promoted tariffs in his campaign and has argued that tariffs will help strengthen the US economy and bring back factory jobs to American workers. The first round of tariffs on started last year with a 25% tariff on over 800 different Chinese goods....

Today marks 13 years since the passing of the Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, pastor, author, and great supporter of the Acton Institute’s mission. On February 1, 1999, Rev. Opitz sent a letter to Leonard P. Liggio (1933-2014) and to me. We were both founding trustees of Acton, which at the time was not yet ten years old. Many friends in the freedom movement, including Father Robert Sirico, Acton’s co-founder, started attending programs conducted by Ed Opitz at the Foundation for...

Today is the U.S. federal holiday known as Washington’s Birthday (not “Presidents Day—see item #1). In honor of George Washington’s birthday, here are 5 things you should know about the day set aside for our America’s premier founding father. 1. Although some state and local governments and private businesses refer to today as President’s Day, the legal public holiday is designated as “Washington’s Birthday” in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code. The observance of Washington’s birthday...

Has “social justice” e a new religion in what many believe to be an irreligious age? Andrew Sullivan recently reflected on the decline of Christianity and the rise of “personal spiritualties” and “political religions,” noting the weaknesses of our modern orthodoxies. “We’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion,”Sullivan wrote. “It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults.” On the right, we see the over-elevation...

At First Things last week,in his essay “Our Poor,” economist Andrew M. Yuengert reflected upon his 2004 Acton monograph Inhabiting the Land, questioning whether his economic analysis (that immigration is a net gain for both immigrants and natives) needs more nuance in the light of our current political climate: In Inhabiting the Land I concluded that we could only argue against immigration if we were willing to “weigh the wage decrease for native unskilled workers more heavily than the significant...

“In study after study,” says Karl Zinsmeister, “religious practice is the behavioral variable with the strongest and most consistent association with generous giving.” In his article for Philanthropy, Zinsmeister examines a range of data to show how America’s religiosity is connected to our charitable giving. Here are a few highlights from her report: • Among Americans who attend services weekly and pray daily, 45 percent had done volunteer work during the previous week. Among all other Americans, only 27 percent...

“What is love?” This question perhaps was most famously posed by the mononymous 1990s philosopher-poet, Haddaway. Among the ponderers of this question, Enlightenment philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, Smith, and Kant are not as easily remembered, lacking as they did Haddaway’s infectious hook. That Adam Smith might be considered a philosopher of love is surprising given that he was a lifelong bachelor who seems not to have had a romantic bone in his body. And Kant derided romantic love as...

Today is the 199th anniversary of the birth of Susan B. Anthony. In honor of her legacy, here are five facts you should know about the great American social reformer: 1. Anthony was born in Massachusetts in 1820 to a family of devout, radical Quakers. Her parents raised her and her siblings to have a passion for social reform, and stressed the importance of issues such as prison reform and the abolishment of slavery.Although she continued to describe herself as...