For nearly eight years, Senior Editor Joe Carter has been a mainstay of the PowerBlog. Not only have e to expect his daily PowerLinks but Joe’s numerous contributions (let’s enumerate: 4,400 posts!) on just about every topic we tackle here have been unfailingly helpful. Joe truly understands Acton’s “markets and morality” way of looking at the world and gave readers concrete ways of understanding often difficult concepts from economics, theology, social science and politics. On Sept. 6, Joe will post...

I appeared on EWTN News Nightly yesterday to talk about the collapse of the Italian government. Such turmoil is nothing new in Italy. Discontent with the political class is the main reason there was a populist coalition government in the first place. What made this government unusual was bination of right- and left-wing populists together. Its failure means that the populist appeal to e ideology is not yet mature enough to rule. Matteo Salvini and the League were initially the...

Over at the University Bookman, W. Bradford Littlejohn reviews Niels Hemmingsen’s On the Law of Nature: A Demonstrative Method, recently published by CLP Academic. Littlejohn describes this surprising sixteenth century treatise as “a concise one-stop shop summary of Aristotelian-Thomistic epistemology, philosophy of action, and natural law theory.” The work, written by a Danish Lutheran theologian, challenges the received historical narratives about Protestant and Roman Catholic ethics: Thanks to the painstaking translation labors of Hillsdale classicist E.J. Hutchinson, Niels Hemmingsen has...

President Donald Trump ignited a national debate when he shared ment referring to him by the messianic title of the “King of Israel.” Whatever this says about President Trump, it unintentionally revealed a great deal about Western mitment to salvation by politics, and it brought to the surface a long-simmering question we must answer: Will we pursue cultural renewal through the sustained preaching and incarnation of the Gospel, or will we turn to a secular ruler for deliverance? The evidence,...

At the behest of one of the editors, we’ve included an appendix in the new volume in the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, On Education, and called it “Lemkes’ Wish.” Here’s the background: Hubertus Johannes Lemkes (1828–97) was a teacher and a co-founder of the Association of Christian Teachers in the Netherlands and the Overseas Possession. In 1893 Lemkes writes a letter to Abraham Kuyper, requesting that Dr. Kuyper take up the challenge of writing a study...

Whenever the conservative movement loses its way, says Samuel Gregg in an article for Law & Liberty, it’s only a matter of time before some turn for guidance to the figure most associated with modern Anglo-American conservatism’s emergence—Edmund Burke. And Burke admirers who have reservations about market economies should remember, says Gregg, that Burke robustly defends what we would call “market liberalism.” Burke’s status as a conservative icon often draws attention away from that portion of his political career spent...

In 1958, Leonard Read published his brilliant essay, “I, Pencil.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently released a wonderful video that illustrates Read’s point that the creation of a pencil requires an unfathomable level plexity and undirected cooperation. Read’s original essay was written from the point of view of the pencil and the humble writing implement explains why it is as much a creation of God as a tree. Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God...

In the routine stories of humanitarian activism gone wrong, we find ready reminders of the limits of good intentions. In each case—whether among governments or non-profits and religious institutions—we see how a heartfelt motivation to “do good” can easily serve as a blind spot on hearts and minds. One of the latest examples involves Renee Bach, an American missionary who, at age 20, moved to Uganda and soon started a charity for malnourished children. Now, Bach is under fire for...

What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? The late great Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. Rosling explains how the productivity gains of the washing machine (and similar labor-saving devices) lead to increases in education and economic growth in the developing world. ...

The U.S. has diverged from the OECD approach to economic and energy issues that critics called this weekend’s G7 Summit the “G6-plus-one.” However, a new study shows America’s less regulated, less regimented economy has generated such abundance that the poorest 20 percent of Americans are more prosperous than the average European. “If the U.S. ‘poor’ were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest,” writes Jim Agresti of Just Facts in a new article for the Acton Institute’s...