David J. Theroux, founder and president of The Independent Institute and the C.S. Lewis Society of California, discusses the writings of C.S. Lewis and Lewis’s views on liberty, natural law and statism. ...

“Consumption serves, sustains and munity—above all the munity,” says Rev. Gregory Jensen in this week’s Acton Commentary. Consumption is not an end in itself but has a purpose. We are, Schmemann says, called by God “to propagate and have dominion over the earth”; that is to say, consumption serves human flourishing. The first chapters of Genesis portray creation as “one all-embracing banquet table,” foreshadowing a central theme in the New Testament. In the Kingdom of God we will “eat and...

After what seemed to be an interminably long wait, Downton Abbey, a British period drama on PBS, recently returned to America. Many of us who have been hooked on the show for four seasons tune in each Sunday night to watch the new twists in the saga of the Earl and Countess of Grantham, their household, and their servants. But as with most pop culture artifacts, this series about Victorian England is having a subversive effect on the views of...

Jeffrey Tucker speaks at the 2015 Acton Lecture Series It’s always good to e old friends to the Acton Building. Last week it was our pleasure to e Jeffrey Tucker, author, speaker, and the founder and Chief Liberty Officer of Liberty.meto Grand Rapids in order to deliver the first Acton Lecture Series lecture of 2015, entitled “Capitalism is About Love.” (We’ll be posting audio and video of his address later this week.) Jeffrey took some time to join me in...

Last Friday at Religion Dispatches, Kara Loewentheil explored the recent story of a Denver bakery that is being “sued for refusing to bake a homophobic cake.” She calls into question the legitimacy of the request: It’s a snappy inversion of the now-classic example of bakers who refuse to provide wedding cakes for gay marriage mitment ceremonies (or florists who refuse to provide flowers, photographers who refuse to photograph the ceremony, etc.). And that’s probably not an accident;if I were a...

It gets really interesting now in the wake of Syriza’s stunning victory in yesterday’s Greek elections, widely interpreted as a populist rejection of austerity programs that could spread to other indebted European Union basket cases. All eyes on are Alexis Tsipras, the newly-sworn in prime minister (in a highly unusual secular ceremony), with a lot of unanswered questions about how his party will govern. (Syriza is the transliterated Greek acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left). I’ve been following this...

“Today, we live in the most prosperous time in human history,” notes the the Index of Economic Freedom, an annual guide published by The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation. “Poverty, sicknesses, and ignorance are receding throughout the world, due in large part to the advance of economic freedom.” The Index covers 10 freedoms – from property rights to entrepreneurship – in 186 countries. So why should we care about economic freedom around the world? Because it is a...

“This is useless. This is gratuitous. This is wonder.” –Evan Koons When we consider the full realm of Christian stewardship, our minds immediately turn to areas like business, finance, ministry, the arts, education, and so on — the placeswhere we “get things done.” But while each of these is indeed an important area of focus, for the Christian, stewardship also involves creating the space to stop and simply behold our God. Yes, we are called to be active and diligent...

Back in October I offered five guidelines on “how to be a better guesstimater,” ways to hone your skills at guessing and estimation — guesstimation — that will help us minimize innumeracy. A recent Washington Post article—“Majority of U.S. public school students are in poverty”—shows how applying these five tips could prevent people from falling for obviously inaccurate reporting. Here is the main claim of the article: For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S....

If you’re a convicted criminal, finding a job while you’re in prison is often easier than getting one after you’ve served your time. Because of an expansive list of mandatory post-release sanctions, inmates often leave prison facing what Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former director of the National Institute of Justice, has called a secondary “invisible punishment” that is frequently more severe than the one levied by any judge or jury....