Last Saturday Pope Benedict XVI addressed a group called Italian National Civil Protection, made up largely of volunteers. This is the organization that provided much of the crowd control at two of Rome’s largest public events, the World Youth Day in 2000, and the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. (I was in Rome for both events and can personally attest to the surprising order these volunteers brought. If only the same order could be seen in everyday...

In what is another book that points to America’s cultural divide, Gina Welch decides to go undercover at the late Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. An atheist, Yale and University of Virginia liberal graduate from Berkeley, California, Welch declares her undercover ruse was needed to better understand evangelicals. In the Land of Believers, Welch decides to fake conversion, e baptized in the church, immerse herself in classes, and even goes to Alaska on a mission trip...

The control of wealth is the control over human life. So if a centrally planned economy decides how wealth is to be created and how it is to be distributed, then they really have a control over human life. That’s from Arnold Beichman, the journalist and scholar, who died Feb. 17 at the age of 96. The Heritage Foundation InsiderOnline Blog retrieved the quote from a 2004 article in a Columbia College alumni magazine. There was also this: Centrally planned...

Nina Shea In the next issue of Religion & Liberty, we are featuring an interview with Nina Shea. The issue focuses on religious persecution with special attention on the ten year anniversary of the fall munism in Eastern Europe. A feature article for this issue written by Mark Tooley is also ing. Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington D.C. In regards to Shea, the portion of the interview below is exclusively for readers of...

In the Orange County Register, Senior Editorial Writer Alan Bock reviews the Acton Institute book, “Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition.” (Available in the Acton Bookshoppe for the bargain price of $6). The book might be viewed as an extended rebuttal to a famous 1967 Science magazine article by Lynn White that contended that the biblical injunction for people to have “dominion” over the Earth led to an arrogant view toward the environment that led to widespread environmental despoliation. The...

On February 25th, while Barack Obama chatted about ObamaCare with members of Congress, the Federal Department of Education – lead by its cabinet level chief Arne Duncan who’s also from Chicago – prepped for release to the public his and his boss’s second assault on our freedom; this time a scheme to further intrude on your child’s education. As an announcement from two think tanks put it: “generationally important Tenth Amendment issues [were] opened on two fronts—the prospect of centralizing...

Saturday February 27 was the second anniversary of the death of the conservative giant William F. Buckley, Jr. I first saw Buckley in person when Ole Miss hosted Firing Line in 1997. I read National Review in High School even though I admit I did not always understand some of his words at that age. It was a wonderful reminder of the importance of intellectualism and conservatism, and that I still had a lot to learn. The political left too...

Riffing off of Lord Acton’s quote on liberty and good government, I came up with an analogy that was well-received at last month’s inaugural Acton on Tap. In his essay, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity,” Acton said the following: Now Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together; but they do not necessarily go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself...

Almost nothing is mon in sports than to hear a sportscaster going on about how some athlete is a fine young man or young woman. How they work hard, sacrificed for their sport, are respected by their teammates, and volunteer with children. We enjoy the thrill of petition and rejoice in a game well played or a move perfectly executed, and it is natural that we hope these athletes are as excellent off the field as on. We want heroes...

Over at Public Discourse, Acton’s Samuel Gregg has just published a piece about the future of money. The issuance of money, he writes, is often associated with issues of national sovereignty, despite the fact that governments have long abused their monopoly of the money supply. Gregg argues, however, that the role played by mismanaged monetary policy in the 2008 financial crisis may well open up the opportunity to consider some truly radical options for how we supply money to the...