My older son’s college psychology class was recently assigned the film A Beautiful Mind, about the Nobel Prize winning economist and schizophrenia sufferer John Nash. The assignment was to watch the film, dig into Nash’s biography, and report on how the film altered Nash’s story of mental breakdown and recovery. We watched the film together as a family (my second viewing), checked out the biography by Sylvia Nasar from a local library, and generally geeked out on Nash and game...

It is a business that exists in the shadows. You won’t see a billboard for a domestic slave, nor a glossy magazine spread for the latest in forced labor. While cities struggle to rid their streets of prostitutes, they forget these people are victims of crime. Yet, make no doubt: human trafficking is big, big business. The International Labor Organization (ILO), a United Nation’s agency dealing with labor issues, has released a report makes clear the financial aspects of human...

In his new book, The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the birth of America’s Left and Right by contrasting the views of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke. I’ve written previously on his chapter on choice vs. obligation, and in a recent appearance on EconTalk, Levin joins economist Russell Roberts to discuss these tensions further, addressing the implications for libertarians and conservatives a bit more directly. It should first be noted that Roberts and Levin offer a dream pairing when es...

Jonathan Witt, research fellow at Acton, recently wrote a piece at The Federalist about “social business.” He argues that it might do more good to own and operate an ethical business that follows through on its contracts and “respects the dignity of employees and customers,” rather than trying to have a “social business.” Witt begins by talking about a cardboard bike. In 2012, Izhar Gafni became relatively famous by creating a sturdy cardboard bike that could be sold to the...

. The premise Ms. Bazelon puts forth is that the growing movement to make sex-selective abortions illegal in the U.S. is based on racial biases towards Asians, e from cultures where sex-selective abortions are mon. Bazelon states, The International Human Rights Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum are publishing a new study that exposes banning abortion based on sex-selection for what it is: a way to restrict abortion, not bat...

Do you know the name of the author and publisher of the Book of Ephesians? Do all Mormons practice polygamy? What about the two major branches of Islam? Apparently, many journalists don’t know the answers to these questions either. (That first one was a real question asked by a journalist to Michael Cromartie, of the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center.) Given how much religion informs the lives of most people on the planet, and our news, it is a...

Neo-, paleo-, theo-, passionate, fiscal, social. . . in modern America there are almost as many brands of conservatism as there are conservatives. To truly understand what a conservative believes, though, it is often more instructive to simply ask what it is they want to conserve. Like Russell Kirk, I believe the institution most essential to conserve is the family. At Canon & Culture I offer a “tentative manifesto” of what a family-first conservatism would entail: I believe that while...

Freedom to practice one’s faith and be a person of faith can be instrumental in enabling the poor to achieve some modicum of social and economic freedom, says Rebecca Shah: Religion is no panacea, but aspects of religion can activate certain practices and partnerships among its adherents that can motivate and encourage economic development. If modern economics continues to yield an understanding of human development that ignores the role of religion, governments and development institutions will persist in acting as...

It is not often that Sojourners president Jim Wallis puts forth ideas that align with those of the Acton Institute. However, in a recent interview, Wallis (touting his new book, mon Good: How the Gospel Brings Hope to a World Divided)said that he recognizes that there are three keys to ending poverty: work and economic activity, innovation, education. He also says his hometown of Detroit has a big lesson to teach us: Detroit shows that the government isn’t enough,” said...

The longer that Americans are unemployed, the more likely they are to report signs of poor psychological well-being. A recent Gallup survey found that about one in five Americans who have been unemployed for a year or more say they currently have or are being treated for depression. Gallup finds that unemployed Americans are more than twice as likely to say they currently have or are being treated for depression than both those with full-time jobs and those who have...