Inspired by Art Prize, I wrote a blog about culture, technology, and the universal desire munity. This appeared on Ethika Politika‘s blog today and an excerpt can be found below: Last week as I was wandering through Grand Rapids’ Art Prize (the world’s largest petition), I came across the very simple interactive piece that is pictured below. Confess is a large board where people can anonymously write their confessions. Everything from the dark, to deeply personal, to lighthearted, to witty...

This week’s Acton Commentary. Sign up for our free, weekly email newsletter here. While you’re at it, pick up a copy of Victor Claar’s new monograph, Fair Trade: It’s Prospects as a Poverty Solution, in the Acton Bookshoppe. +++++++++ Searching for Meaningful Work: Reflections on the 2010 Economics Nobel By Victor V. Claar This year’s Nobel economics prize was awarded to two Americans and a British-Cypriot for developing a theory that helps to explain why unemployment can persist even when...

Here is an interesting article by Patricia Cohen in the New York Times about the role of culture in poverty: ‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback While it is obvious to most observers that culture plays an important role in shaping norms and habits, and thus would have impact on poverty–discussions of culture have not been within the domain of polite conversation for the last several decades within many academic circles. As Patricia Cohen writes: The reticence was a legacy...

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, at a meeting with German President Christian Wulff in Moscow today: “I am deeply convinced that modern civilization is making the same mistake as the Soviet Union. It doesn’t matter very much why you are removing faith from pubic life. The final result, as engineers say, is the same: you get dismantling of religious consciousness,” the Patriarch said. The Russian Church has lived for decades in a country where the official ideology was the ideology of...

Take at look at Jonathan Last’s very good piece in the Weekly Standard about the real population problem that is confronting the world–people aren’t having enough babies. In America’s One Child Policy, Last explains how fertility throughout the entire world is declining and what the impact will be on society and the economy. During the last 50 years, fertility rates have fallen all over the world. From Africa to Asia, South America to Eastern Europe, from Third World jungles to...

Estelle Snyder makes an excellent case that Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Jesse Helms had similar humble backgrounds and beliefs that helped form a deep bond between the two men, despite being separated by language, culture, geography, and an Iron Curtain. In a paper published by the North Carolina History Project titled “Champions of Freedom: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Jesse Helms,” Snyder argues that their relationship was an important one in terms of confronting the evils of Communism with a more aggressive posture,...

A new Detroit News column by Acton Institute President and co-founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico: Tea party must define ideas By Father Robert Sirico If the recent analysis by the New York Times on the success of the tea party movement is correct, the influence of this movement favoring limited government and low levels of taxation may have a decided impact in the ing elections, particularly in holding the Republican leadership’s feet to the fire on a variety of related...

A good give-and-take on the tea party movement on Our Sunday Visitor. Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, weighs in: Many of the stances tea party activists have taken on political issues also would resonate with Catholic voters, Father Sirico said. For example, many practicing Catholics would likely agree with the tea party’s concern about the overreaching involvement of government in schools and health care, he said, and though the movement has hesitated to identify...

This year’s Lausanne Congress, Cape Town 2010, is underway and all reports are of a massive event, with substantial buildup and coordination of efforts of and implications of various kinds across the globe. (Dr. Anthony Bradley, a research fellow at the Acton Institute, participated in one of the conversation gatherings last month leading up to the Cape Town event.) In my book published earlier this summer, Ecumenical Babel, I mentioned Cape Town 2010 as one of the major ecumenical events...

HernandezOn , Ismael Hernandez talks about his journey from anti-American activist to his disillusionment with socialism and eventually the founding of the Freedom & Virtue Institute. Hernandez, a frequent lecturer at Acton conferences, was asked by interviewer Jamie Glazov to recall the estrangement from family and friends that resulted when his “passion for socialism” faded away. For the first time in my life, I began to weakly contemplate the possibility that things were not as I had been told. There...