You may think that if you’re a law-abiding citizen, the concept of “bail” may be irrelevant. Well, maybe you forgot to pay your car insurance. Or maybe your license lapsed. You get pulled over because your tail light is out. It’s not a violent crime – a lapse in judgement, or a lack of money, perhaps. And suddenly you need bail. $1000, the judge tells you, or you have to go to Rikers Island, New York’s main plex. You and...

On this edition of Radio Free Acton, your humble hostbravely battles a late-spring cold to bring you an interview with Jonathan Witt, Managing Editor at TheStream.org, and author of The Hobbit Party: The Vision ofFreedom that Tolkien Got and The West Forgot. Was Frodo a small-government type? Was Tolkien a card-carrying member of the local Republican party? Or were the hobbits short-statured hippies who really enjoyed their pipe weed and the free healthcare provided by the Shire’s smooth-running, benevolent bureaucracy?...

On June 18, 2015, Pope Francis will issue the encyclical,Laudato si’. Here are some answers to questions people who aren’t Catholic—like me—may have about the document: What is an encyclical? The term encyclical (from the Greek egkyklios, kyklos meaning a circle) refers to a circular letter, that is, a letter that gets circulated to a particular group. A papal encyclical is a letter written by the Pope to a particular audience of patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops of the Catholic...

In 1865, W. Stanley Jevons predicted that with coal reserves of 90 billion tons, England would run out within 100 years. Today, the country has between three trillion and 23 trillion ton, enough to last Britain for centuries. In 1914, the Bureau of Mines fretted that with a total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels, the U.S. only had about a ten-year supply of oil. Today, a hundred years later, we’re estimated to have 36 billion barrels left in...

Large cities in the northeast like Boston, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and so on, are often caricatured as wastelands of non-religious, unchurched, overtly secular theaters. Caricatures of this type seem odd given the fact that many of America’s oldest religious institutions are actively operating in those regions. One of my friends is quick to point out that every week people sit on church pews in northeastern churches that older than many states out west. For example, by looking at the...

The impending encyclical of Pope Francis has many Christians thinking how man should relate to our environment. But the discussions tend to focus on issues like man-made climate change, which can cause us to overlook equally important environmental stewardship concerns, such as the welfare of animals. Why should Christians care about the ethical treatment of animals? Because animals are the second most important aspect of creation, says Randy Alcorn, and the first most important thing, outside of other humans and...

As the number of Republicans vying for the presidency reaches new levels of absurdity, candidates are scrambling to affirm their conservative bona fides. If you can stomach the pandering, it’s a goodtime to explore the ideas bouncing around the movement, and when necessary,prune off thepoisonous limbs. Alas, for all of its typical promotions of free enterprise, free trade, and individual liberty, the modern conservative movement retains a peculiar and ever-growing faction of folks who harbor anti-immigration sentiments that contradict and...

The latest monograph from Acton, The Cure for Consumerism by Rev. Gregory Jensen,will be available for free starting this Wednesday, June 10, and ending Friday, the 12th, at midnight. This is the second monograph in the Orthodox Christian Social Thought Series. Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, there has been a rapid growth of human flourishing, but critics of the market economy have argued that these improvements have led to consumerism and rampant materialism. This monograph will explore the...

Mike Rowe, the “Dirty Jobs” guy, makes an occasional appearance here on the PowerBlog. Why do we like him? Because he appreciates hard work, honest work, just as we do. It’s surprising how many people don’t share that appreciation. On Sunday, Rowe posted, on his Facebook page, a letter he received from a rather unhappy man. Hey Mike, Your constant harping on “work ethic” is growing tiresome. Just because someone’s poor doesn’t mean they’re lazy. The unemployed want to work!...

No one is interested in vying for the worst human trafficking record, but Asia would certainly be in the running. Yet, today’s Business Insider claims that Asia is getting out of the human trafficking business; can that be true? As usual, the truth is more nuanced than a headline allows. It may be that the traffickers and smugglers are getting craftier, but it is also true that global pressure has caused traffickers in Myanmar and Thailand to – at the...