Contrary to popularperceptions, people with disabilities are equipped with unique skills and creative capacity, giving them a powerful role to play in the world economy, whether as restauranteurs, goldsmiths, warehouse workers, marine biologists, car washers, or Costco employees. Unfortunately, those gifts are not always recognized by the marketplace. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for those with disabilities is more than doublethe average for thosewithout. Thankfully, that blind spot is slowly being revealed, whether by forward-thinking...

“There are solid grounds for believing that the first Christian believers practiced a form munism and usufruct [i.e., the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance],” wrote Peter Marshall in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. As evidence Marshall cites the second chapter of the book of Acts: And all who believed were together and had all things mon. And they were selling their possessions and belongings...

On November 19, the Acton Institute was pleased to e Marina Nemat to the Mark Murray Auditorium as part of the 2015 Acton Lecture Series. Marina was born in 1965 in Tehran, Iran, in what was at the time a relatively secular and free nation. (Granted, she lived under the dictatorship of Mohammad RezaPahlavi – the Shah of Iran – but as we were reminded a couple of weeks ago by Jay Nordlinger, when es to dictators you have to...

Imagine you’re a single mom with one child who receives $19,300 a year in government benefits. A local business offers to hire you full-time at an hourly rate of $15 an hour. At 2,000 hours a year (40 hours for 50 weeks) you would earn $30,000. Should you take the job or stay on the government dole? The additional $10,700 a year certainly sounds enticing. But because you would lose your benefits and have to pay taxes, your disposable e...

I’m not entirely sure, but it seems a safe bet that Chicago bluesman Willie Dixon wasn’t referring to the Internal Revenue Service when he wrote his classic “Back Door Man.” But, as it turns out, the IRS is serving as a convenient back-door resource for the progressive movement to name and shame donors to causes and organizations opposed by leftist shareholder activists. The IRS is proposing rules that will grant nonprofit organizations the option of disclosing donors of $250 or...

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood production: Nuns dressing up as prostitutes to infiltrate brothels and rescue woman and children from sexual abuse. But the organization of religious sisters called Talitha Kum, which translated from Aramaic means “arise child” (Mark 5:41), is real—and they’re expanding across the globe. Talitha Kum, also known as the International Network of Consecrated Life Against Trafficking in Persons, is a network within the International Union of Superiors General which originates from a project...

Today is the unofficial first day of the holiday shopping season. Here are five facts you should know about “Black Friday.” 1. The term “Black Friday” was coined by the Philadelphia Police Department’s traffic squad in the 1950s. According to Philadelphia newspaper reporter Joseph P. Barrett, “It was the day that Santa Claus took his chair in the department stores and every kid in the city wanted to see him. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season.”...

On this edition of Radio Free Acton, we talk with Marina Nemat – author, columnist, human rights advocate, and former political prisoner in her native Iran. Born in 1965, Nemat grew up in a country ruled by the Shah – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – who ruled in a relatively liberal pared to what was to follow after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Nemat describes her youth and the changes that came after the revolution that led her to her time...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “Cheap Grace and Gratitude,” I extend the notion of “cheap grace” beyond the realm of special or saving grace to the more mundane, general gifts mon grace. One of the long-standing criticisms mon grace is that it actually cheapens or devalues a proper understanding of special grace. That is, by describing mon gifts of God to all people as a form of “grace,” the distinctive work of salvation can be overshadowed or under-emphasized. This criticism...

In his encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis appeals for “a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.” (n. 14) The encyclical also calls for “broader proposals” (n. 15), “a variety of proposals” (n.60), greater engagement between religion and science (n. 62) and among the sciences (n. 201), and bringing together scientific-technological language...