As we close out the year, we want to thank our PowerBlog readers for reading and contributing to our blog. If you’re a new reader we encourage you to catch up by checking out our top 10 most popular posts for 2012: 1. What’s Next in the Fight Against the HHS Mandate Elise Hilton Kyle Duncan, general counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, gives us a glimpse of what is ahead in the fight for religious liberty regarding...

Acton’s Twitter followers are at an all-time high, and we’re gaining about 45 new followers every month. Here’s a look back at our 10 Most Tweetable Moments of 2012: Acton Commentary: The LBJ Curse on the Black Vote How to explain the entitlement crisis to an 8 year old The FRC Shooting & the vocation of a hero The Israelites of the Hebrew Bible never quite figured out how best to arrange human political affairs Internships for 2012 Christian schools...

In the New York Post, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at “the spread throughout America of economic expectations and arrangements directly at odds with our republic’s founding” and asks what the slow walk to “Europeanization” means for the long term. Gregg: Unfortunately there’s a great deal of evidence suggesting America is slouching down the path to Western Europe. In practical terms, that means social-democratic economic policies: the same policies that have turned many Western European nations into a byword...

“Why are you going to business school?” my friend asked, with some concern, “It seems like such a waste of your time. Why not study history or philosophy or the Great Books or something you’d enjoy.” It was a good question. I mitting myself to spending two years going to school full-time (while working full-time) to get a degree in a subject—business administration—in which I didn’t feel particularly passionate. But I felt that God was calling me to go to...

Zero-sum: It’s thinking that if you have more, I have less. One more baby in a family is one more mouth to feed, and less food for everyone else. One new business opens up on the block, and all the rest of the businesses suffer. The guy in the cubicle next to you gets a raise, and you get nothing, because there’s nothing left. Except that it’s wrong. Lots of people know it, too. P.J. O’Rourke knows it, and he...

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As es to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the mentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year. The following list includes articles published in 2012 by various Acton Institute staffers: Kishore Jayabalan, director of Istituto Acton February 08, 2012 Obamacare vs the Catholic Bishops May 02, 2012 Vatican Affirms ‘Supernatural’ Purpose to Work Life...

Christian’s Library Press has released the third book in their Work & Economics series,Flourishing Churches and Communities: A Pentecostal Primer on Faith, Work, and Economics for Spirit-Empowered Discipleship by Charlie Self. Dr. Self isdirector of PhD studies in Bible and theology and associate professor of church history at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri. Previous books in the series wereFlourishing Faith by Chad Brand andHow God Makes the World A Better Place by David Wright. While Pentecostal Christianity...

It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire. The Brits colonized vast areas of the earth, civilizing exotic places with the likes of afternoon tea and cricket. Oh, and happily using up natural resources along the way. Those days are gone, but we’ve entered a new era of colonialism: renting the wombs of women in exotic places to fulfill a desire to have a child, under any circumstances. And now the natural resources are the...

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary,a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As es to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the mentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year. The following list includes articles published in 2012 by Ray Nothstine, an associate editor at Acton and managing editor of Religion & Liberty: February 01, 2012 Playing Politics with Unemployed Veterans June 06, 2012 Calvin Coolidge and the...

In the German newsmagazine Spiegel, Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati says that foreign aid to Africa is doing more harm than good: SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa… Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop. SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty. Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really...