However misguided their aims, there was one a time when progressives worked to protect the welfare and improve the lot of the individual. Today, the goal of many progressives is to protect the welfare and improve the lot of public bureaucracies. A prime — and stunningly inane — example of this tendency is found Allison Benedikt’s “manifesto” in Slate titled, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person“: You are a bad person if you...

As we approach Labor Day here in the U.S., it’s good to ponder “work”, that most ordinary feat nearly all of us perform every day. We get up, get dressed, and do our jobs. It’s quite simple…and quite amazing. There is a lovely reflection on this from Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek: Ponder this astonishing fact: Each and every thing that we consume today in market societies is something that requires the coordinated efforts of millions of people, yet each...

We are told, over and over, we are in the midst of a “culture war” here in the U.S. It’s Right vs. Left, Republican vs. Democrat, Baby Boomers vs. Gen Xers, Pro-Life Vs. Pro-Abortion. You get labeled by the church you attend, the shoes you wear, the type of beer you drink. We want our culture to be “better,” but we can’t seem to agree on what that means. David French, Senior Counsel at the American Center of Law and...

The concept of the American Dream can cause a fair amount of tension within the church, says Drew Cleveland. Some have gone as far as to make the American Dream a concept against which the church ought to be opposed: The concern that this dream can be misused is not wholly invalid. Even Smith acknowledges that “this dream easily slides towards idolatry,” and yes, it is often true that a good thing can e an object of worship if not...

Earlier this month, the Chicago Tribune ran a story by Cezary Podkul on concerns raised by the Missionary Oblates munity modities trading. Titled “For Nuns and Analysts Alike, Bank Commodity Earnings Are a Mystery,” the story focuses on Rev. Seamus Finn, the Oblates’ top dog, and his fears that Goldman Sachs’ trading practices negatively impact energy and food prices. Podkul reports: Driven by a determination to invest in a socially conscious way, Finn’s group has been concerned about modities activities...

There are times when you have to imagine that black justice pioneers like Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and the like, must be turning in their graves at the nonsense circumstances that black Americans find themselves in in 2013. For example, MTV’s Video Music Awards promoted, yet again, the race-driven stereotype of black women as sexualized jezebels. The Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University explains the history of the jezebel stereotype: The portrayal of black...

To kick off the Labor Day weekend, Peggy Noonan offerssome timely thoughts on the meaning of work: Joblessness is a personal crisis because work is a spiritual event. A job isn’t only a means to a paycheck, it’s more. “To work is to pray,” the old priests used to say. God made us as many things, including as workers. When you work you serve and take part. To work is to be integrated into the daily life of the nation....

Yesterday, as a nation, we spent time reflecting on the American landscape 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech. In it, Dr. King decried that our nation – while abolishing slavery legally – still had a long way to go “until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.'” We still have a long way to go. According to the Polaris Project, there are hundreds of thousands of people trafficked in...

For this week’s Acton Commentary, ahead of Labor Day weekend, I write about “working harder and smarter,” lessons we can learn from Ashton Kutcher and Mike Rowe. One of the implications of connecting hard work with smart work is that the difficulty of work on its own does not determine its value in the marketplace. It isn’t a question of how hard you are working, but how hard you are working in productive service. This is why Lester DeKoster writes,...

The topic of mankind’s “dominion” over God’s created order is one that has been misunderstood by entire generations of Americans in the last half century. Many conscientious people of faith worry that the traditional Judeo-Christian values system in the West has dropped the ball when es to the environment and our usage of natural resources. While there are more than a few grains of truth in these charges, the emotional appeal of being on the side of Mother Nature can...