Acton’s Sam Gregg on Public Discourse: On November 15th, leaders of the world’s largest economies will gather in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ongoing international financial crisis. Figures such as Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown view the summit as an opportunity to reform international financial structures and perhaps create new ones. He and others have spoken of a “new Bretton Woods”—the 1944 international meeting that sought to design an international financial structure for a post-war world. Today, relatively little is...

The National Catholic High School Honor Roll announced its fifth selection of the best 50 Catholic secondary schools in the United States. The purpose of the Honor Roll is to recognize and encourage excellence in Catholic secondary education. It is a critical resource for parents and educators that distinguishes those schools that excel in three categories: academic excellence, Catholic Identity, and civic education. This year’s list includes 10 new honorees as well as eight schools that have earned recognition in...

I made a mental note of it awhile back when I heard that there was a “Christian” version of the immensely popular Guitar Hero video game franchise in the works. Wired recently reviewed Guitar Praise – Solid Rock here. Reviewer Eliot Van Buskirk notes that Guitar Praise “inhabits a gentler world where a bad performance gets you mild clapping and gentle suggestions instead of the raucous boos and catcalls that pany failure in Guitar Hero.” There are two conditions that...

Posted at the Center for a Just Society (notice courtesy the National Humanities Institute), Dr. Mark T. Mitchell asks a series of questions focused on the intersection between morality and economics in light of the recent financial crisis. In “Ten Questions and a Modest Proposal,” Dr. Mitchell invokes the institute’s namesake and this blog’s tagline. In question number 9, Dr. Mitchell says, Lord Acton’s hoary saying is pertinent: “power tends to corrupt.” If so, then we should make efforts to...

Just in time for Christmas, Acton Media’s new documentary The Birth of Freedom is now available for purchase from the Acton Bookshoppe. panied by a study guide which explores several core themes of the documentary, The Birth of Freedom tells the story of how modern understandings of individual liberty were developed and addresses the questions, “Why would anyone believe that all men are created equal? That all should be free? That all deserve a voice in choosing their leaders? Why...

The Spring issue of Religion & Liberty is now available online. The feature is an interview with Turkish scholar Mustafa Akyol. Akyol was a faculty member at Acton University last summer. The title of the interview is “Turkey: Islam’s Bridge to Religious and Economic Liberty?” In the interview Akyol notes: So Turkey will not change the world in one day, but if it shows that a Muslim society can achieve democracy and lives in peace with the western world, that...

It is monplace in discussions of environmental economics to consider so-called “negative externalities,” a technical term for the bad or damaging consequences of an activity that affects those outside the realm of economic decision-making. For instance, I can make the choice to plant a tree in my yard on my own (presuming there are no regulatory hurdles to jump). A negative externality for my neighbor might be that my tree dumps a lot of leaves into his or her yard...

The National WWII Memorial When FDR ordered General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines in 1942, the dismal fate of the American and Filipino defenders at Bataan and Corregidor was sealed. Japanese forces had blockaded the island, achieved air superiority, and set their forces up to easily overpower the American defenses. The story of Bataan and Corregidor was a heroic tragedy. Heroic in that American and Filipino forces fought back bravely for months, and tragic in that any relief, retreat,...