Edmund Burke: "...in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all."In today’s Acton Commentary, “The State of the Fourth Estate,” I argue that the profession of journalism must be separable from traditional print media. My alma mater’s flagship student publication, The State News, where I broke into the ranks of op-ed columnists, celebrated its centennial anniversary earlier this month. The economics of news media increasingly make it seem as if the few kinds...

A recent Time magazine feature, which highlights “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” has been making the rounds on the theological ‘nets. Coming in at #3 is “The New Calvinism,” which author David Van Biema describes as “Evangelicalism’s latest success plete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and bination’s logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time’s dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.”...

Back in September I posted an announcement about a new book that contributed in interesting ways to our understanding of patent/intellectual property issues. Now Julio Cole’s full review of the book in the Independent Review is available online. An excerpt: Should we really be surprised that the patent system’s internal dynamics have finally brought us to the point at which the potential profits of patenting have, for most industries, been entirely gobbled up by lawyers’ fees? Isn’t that e what...

Last night I was reading Thoughts of A Philosophical Fighter Pilot by Jim Stockdale (1923-2005). The book is a collection of Stockdale’s speeches and essays over the years. So much of his well thought out writings are words to live by and definitely worth sharing. Here is a timely quote from an essay titled “On Public Virtue” written in 1988: Those who study the rise and fall of civilizations learn that no ing has been surely fatal to republics as...

A recent article by the John Locke Foundation’s Michael Moore (no, not the filmmaker) does a good job of outlining the calling of entrepreneurs. He makes a very positive mention of Acton, Fr. Sirico, and The Call of the Entrepreneur. The full article can be read here. Here’s an excerpt: If you ask someone on the street today what they think is a humble and worthwhile profession, they might say a doctor, teacher, missionary, fireman, munity organizer. Now those are...

No, not that Friedman. In a wide-ranging lecture for the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Policy earlier this year, George Friedman touched on American policy with regard to trade. He says of the United States, it has the potential to reshape patterns of international trade if it chooses. The United States throughout the 20th century, the second half in particular, has operated under the principle of a free-trade regime in which its Navy was primarily used to facilitate international...

The World Freedom Atlas, “a geovisualization tool for world statistics,” looks like a very powerful plement to something like the Gapminder Trendalyzer tool. ...

In mentary, Sam Gregg writes that “there is little reason to be optimistic about the probable effects of the Obama Administration’s interventionist approach to mortgage relief. In fact, it is most likely to be counterproductive.” More placency about moral hazard? Read mentary at the Acton Website and share ments below. ...

When I was in college, a popular refrain from many academics was to explain the rise of the “Right” or conservatism in the American South as a dynamic brought about because of race. Books like Dan T. Carter’s The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics attempted to link the politics of George Wallace to Ronald Reagan’s brand of conservatism. And if you are suspicious of that theory because Wallace...

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, W. Bradford Wilcox looks at the “boost” that President Obama will give secularism through his rapid expansion of government. An Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University, Wilcox is also a 1994 graduate of the Acton Institute’s Toward a Free and Virtuous Society program. Excerpt: … the president’s audacious plans for the expansion of the government — from the stimulus...