Earlier this week, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued a “stay at home” order in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. As a result, many people have taken on new responsibilities and challenges in addition to their existing duties. For those working in what have been deemed “essential businesses,” this has meant additional professional requirements. For those working in jobs deemed “non-essential,” employers and employees have either had to transform the nature of their work creatively or reduce—and in...

As bination of isolation and bad news about the coronavirus pandemic depresses Americans, it is vital to look for the silver lining. The good news is that businesses from coast to coast and around the world are performing good deeds, whether civic-minded or profit-driven, that are making people’s lives better. Here are just a few examples: 1. Apple donates 10 million face masks to healthcare facilities. Last Saturday, Apple pledged to donate two million facemasks to healthcare workers. Vice President...

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and President Donald Trump are verbally sparring over who bears the blame for the state’s lack of ventilators, a crucial need for patients suffering from the coronavirus. Beneath the incendiary rhetoric of the two leaders, neither of whom is a stranger to verbal fisticuffs, lies an important but little-remarked fact. The insight revolves around one number: 15,783. That figure spotlights failings well beyond this controversy. The battle of blame-shifting involves who should be purchasing ventilators...

With so many people around the world in moderate or full quarantines and lockdowns, many of them are turning to books to pass the time, ease their fears, or simply take advantage of an unexpected and involuntary opportunity to recharge their intellectual batteries. This being the case, I’d like to offer a short summary of some of the lesser-known books written by one of my favorite thinkers, the German economist Wilhelm Röpke, in the hope that it may entice some...

As alarm bells continue ringing for the coronavirus pandemic, governments have aggressively stepped up heavy-handed measures to flatten the curve of contagion – especially through forced social distancing. While surely beneficial to slow the pace of infection, such radical isolation has halted virtually all public gatherings and most private free associations at work, worship, school and private charities. Should such lock-down procedures endure for a much longer-term and with greater severity, what will this mean? Will our free associations head...

During uncertain times, Rev. Robert Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, offers his thoughts on human flourishing, subsidiarity, and more. (This video was recorded and released on March 20, 2020.) Some of Father Sirico’s mended resources are listed below the video. Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan (Oxford University Press, 1987) On the principle of subsidiarity On Smith and the responsibilities of the state, including in time of emergency On the failure of centralized supranational responses ...

The newest issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality is now live on our website here and in the mail to subscribers. This issue includes an excellent lineup of scholarly articles ranging from Christian education, to private property in the early Church, to sixteenth-century political philosophy, to environmentalism, to the crisis of the public square. As a special feature, it also contains the papers from a symposium on the Dominican contribution to liberty, with contributions from Catherine Joseph Droste,...

In this episode, Acton’s President and Co-founder, Rev. Robert Sirico, offers some thoughts on what the role of the government should be during a crisis. When we’re confronted with unique crises, especially like the Coronavirus pandemic the world is facing now, there are justified government interventions. However, we can’t discount the principle of subsidiarity, as well as the division of labor and voluntary action. How can we wisely approach these principles in the reality of our current context? Rev. Sirico...

This morning Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s managing director, international, wrote in Forbes about Latin American countries’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus there hasn’t reached the levels we see in China or Europe or even the U.S., but there are serious concerns about preparedness for future developments, especially regarding Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two largest countries in both population and economic strength. Populist leaders Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico have often seemed flippant...

However unique their history or munities experiencing high unemployment are pockmarked by the same sights: shuttered factories, rows of abandoned homes bulldozed or set ablaze by arsonists, and a debilitating hopelessness. After sifting through the wreckage of jobless cities and shattered lives for his new documentary,America Lost filmmaker Christopher F. Rufo found a crisis of faith and work. Rufo spent three years following the lives of people struggling to get by in three munities: Youngstown, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; and Stockton,...