Yesterday in Forbes, Alejandro Chafuen, Acton’s Managing Director, International, analyzed moral questions of cryptocurrency in light of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. It is an application of centuries-old thought to a very recent phenomenon—but of course, as the article seeks to show, moral considerations are perennial even as their particular objects change. What would Thomas Aquinas have thought of cryptocurrency? Our answer may be a conjecture, but if we look at Aquinas’s body of work our conjecture can be well-informed....

Conventional wisdom believes three things: Women areunderrepresentedin science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); this is largely due to sexual discrimination; and the government must redress this imbalance. But multiple studies have discovered a much different reason behind the STEM gender gap. Most media and mentary accepts the theory of “disparate impact”: Any statistical inequality isipso facto“proof” of discrimination. When activistscallthis “one of the most important issues of our time,” opinion-makers nod in agreement. The United Nations General Assembly has passed...

Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, who famously lost a senate bid against Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the 2018 election, is currently one of the front-runners in the Democratic presidential primary race. He has polled as high as 12% and as low as 5% in recent polls. He raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours after announcing his candidacy, and a total of $9.4 million in the first 18 days. I have to admit, I don’t get O’Rourke’s appeal. South...

Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. Because unemployment is a spiritual problem, Christians in America need to understand and be aware of the monthly data on employment. Each month highlight thelatest numberswe need to know...

When anyone criticizes socialism by pointing out the failures of socialist countries like Cuba or Venezuela, its defenders claim, “That’s authoritarian socialism, that’s not the type of socialism we support.” We defenders of free enterprise mock this shift, but don’t we do something similar? When anyone criticizes capitalism, don’t we say, “That’s crony capitalism, that’s not the type of capitalism we support”? Can the two really be separated? As political scientists Michael C. Munger and Mario Villarreal-Diaz write in their...

“Conservative liberalism” isn’t a monly used in the United States. Indeed, to American ears, it seems positively oxymoronic. In Europe, however, it constitutes a venerable tradition of political thought and embraces figures ranging from the French thinkers Alexis de Tocqueville and Raymond Aron to economists such as the primary intellectual architect of the German economic miracle, Wilhelm Röpke, and the French monetary theorist Jacques Rueff. As a political tradition, the “liberal” part of conservative liberalism concerns mitment to freedom. The...

I recently participated in a student seminar at a large state university. We were discussing readings by Adam Smith, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. One student appeared to have a fairly strong attachment to Marxist and socialist ideas. I found myself grateful to him because his participation vastly improved the conversation. At one point, he ventured a critique about the different amounts of money people receive as pay for their work. “What one human being can do is not...

Henry Lee III, besides being the father of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, may be best known for his masterful eulogy of George Washington. “To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” was Lee’s most memorable line about the first American president. In “Light-Horse Harry Lee,”(Regnery History, 434 pages, $29.99), historian Ryan Cole offers up prehensive portrait of the oft-forgotten Lee whose rapid rise as a brilliant military...

As Republicans unveil plans pulsory paid family leave, they would be well instructed to see how such policies have hurt women’s employment prospects. In Europe, where paid leave is pulsory, women face fewer prospects for advancement than in the United States. Veronique de Rugy, a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, writes about the example of Denmark in The American Spectator. De Rugy, who took part in the first transatlantic “Reclaiming the West” conference in London...

On this episode of Acton Line, Trey Dimsdale, director of program outreach at Acton Institute, sits down with Andrew Graham, attorney at First Liberty Institute, a public interest law firm. Trey and Andrew talk about a current case threatening Bladensburg World War I Memorial in Maryland, known as the Peace Cross. The land on which the cross stands was first privately owned by American Legion and the memorial was erected with privately raised funds. Now the land belongs to the...