Sign up for Acton News & Commentary here. This week, I contributed a piece on Jim Wallis’ new book. +++++++++ This class of the very poor – those who are just on the borders of pauperism or fairly over the borders – is rapidly growing. Wealth is increasing very fast; poverty, even pauperism, is increasing still more rapidly. – Washington Gladden, Applied Christianity (1886) For three decades, we have experienced a social engineered inequality that is really a sin –...

The family friendly Movieguide published my review of Michael Moore’s trashing of the market economy, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” Excerpt: Perhaps the most egregious bit of manipulative effort Moore displays in his latest attempt, which by all reports has failed miserably at the box office, is his attempt to use religion, in particular the social teachings of the Catholic Church, to grant an imprimatur to his un-nuanced critique of the business economy. e out of his Catholic closet (who knew...

PopSci follows up with the question I asked awhile back, “Why Not Just Dispose of Nuclear Waste in the Sun?” The piece raises doubts about launch reliability: “It’s a bummer when a satellite ends up underwater, but it’s an entirely different story if that rocket is packing a few hundred pounds of uranium. And if the uranium caught fire, it could stay airborne and circulate for months, dusting the globe with radioactive ash. Still seem like a good idea?” This...

Heads up to those in the Southern California area: Distinguished scholar, author, and former Ambassador Michael Novak will give an April 15 lecture at Fuller Theological Seminary on “The Moral Foundation of Markets.” Novak will argue for the need to re-establish an informed and well-reasoned understanding of both the value of markets for human well-being and the moral foundation necessary for their continued survival. Among other achievements, Novak is the 1994 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion,...

A very good piece on taxation, e inequality and fairness in today’s Wall Street Journal by Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks, a frequent guest speaker at Acton events, is also author of “The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future”, ing from Basic Books in June. Watch for the review on the PowerBlog soon. Simple facts about our tax system do not support the contention that it is...

A good back-and-forth at in character on health care reform between Karen Davenport and Heather R. Higgins. Question: Will the implementation of the health-care bill passed by Congress improve the character of our country? Davenport says “yes”: While we cede some rights, we also assume new responsibilities. First, we assume the responsibility to obtain and maintain coverage for ourselves, and acknowledge that we cannot wait to purchase health insurance until we are sick. We also take on greater responsibility for...

A Polish friend mended this NYT piece by Roger Cohen reflecting on the most recent tragedy visited upon the Polish people. Cohen’s friend, Adam Michnik in Warsaw, “an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers,” had said to him in the past that: …my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A...

The new issue of Religion & Liberty, featuring an interview with Nina Shea, is now available online. A February preview of Shea’s interview, which was an exclusive for PowerBlog readers, can be found here. Shea pays tribute to the ten year collapse munism in Eastern Europe, which began in the fall of 1989. The entire issue is dedicated to those who toiled for freedom. Shea is able to make the connection between important events and times in the Cold War...

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said that the House needed to pass the health care reform legislation so we could find out what was in it? Well, it turns out that she might have done Congress a big favor by slowing things down and allowing her House members to figure out what was in the bill before passing it. I mean, I’m only saying that because it seems that in the process of passing the bill Congress may have accidentally left...

Edmund Conway, economics editor of The Telegraph, looks at a new analysis of government debt by Dylan Grice of Societe Generale. The charts are eye popping. It’s not just a Greek, or EU problem. It’s also something that Americans e to grips with, and soon. You might call it a moral issue — too long living beyond our means. Conway quotes Grice, and then sums up: “The most chilling similarity between the Greeks and everyone else isn’t in the charts...