I made a mental note of it awhile back when I heard that there was a “Christian” version of the immensely popular Guitar Hero video game franchise in the works. Wired recently reviewed Guitar Praise – Solid Rock here. Reviewer Eliot Van Buskirk notes that Guitar Praise “inhabits a gentler world where a bad performance gets you mild clapping and gentle suggestions instead of the raucous boos and catcalls that pany failure in Guitar Hero.” There are two conditions that...

He’s baaaaaaaak. When greeting old friends after a period of absence, Ralph Waldo Emerson used to ask: "What has e clear to you since we last met?" What is clear to us and many others is that market capitalism has arrived at a critical juncture. Even beyond the bailouts and recent volatility, the challenges of the climate crisis, water scarcity, e disparity, extreme poverty and disease mand our urgent attention… An improvement over Unsustainable Capitalism, I s’pose. But like Clinton/Gore,...

Just in time for Christmas, Acton Media’s new documentary The Birth of Freedom is now available for purchase from the Acton Bookshoppe. panied by a study guide which explores several core themes of the documentary, The Birth of Freedom tells the story of how modern understandings of individual liberty were developed and addresses the questions, “Why would anyone believe that all men are created equal? That all should be free? That all deserve a voice in choosing their leaders? Why...

Posted at the Center for a Just Society (notice courtesy the National Humanities Institute), Dr. Mark T. Mitchell asks a series of questions focused on the intersection between morality and economics in light of the recent financial crisis. In “Ten Questions and a Modest Proposal,” Dr. Mitchell invokes the institute’s namesake and this blog’s tagline. In question number 9, Dr. Mitchell says, Lord Acton’s hoary saying is pertinent: “power tends to corrupt.” If so, then we should make efforts to...

If a handful of friends and I were able to bang our heads against the wall for years by speaking the truth about Communist totalitarianism while surrounded by an ocean of apathy, there is no reason why I shouldn’t go on banging my head against the wall by speaking ad nauseam, despite the condescending smiles, about responsibility and morality in the face of our present social marasmus. There is no reason to think that this struggle is a lost cause....

Obama won’t get the mainlineEvangelical vote. Will McCain? I doubt it. UPDATE: More here. EPILOGUE: Here’s an astute observation from a progressive blogger last week. One underdiscussed scenario in this election is the one wherein Republican base turnout is relatively low. Although this has generally been an engaging election with engaging candidates, the base remains considerably less enthusiastic about John McCain than it was about George W. Bush, and McCain is also lacking Bush’s ground game. While the natural assumption...

One does not broadcast his opinions in various forums over the years as I have done without receiving my fair share of disagreement from all sides, friends and foes alike. One participant who came to a recent conference remarked, “All my life I have been looking to build a fair and egalitarian society, but I have now learned why it is better to advance a free and virtuous society.” Yet, something new came my way when I received an envelope...

From the latest issue of Wired… Illustration by Dan ...

We’ve posted Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s Oct. 30 speech delivered at the Acton Institute annual dinner in Grand Rapids, Mich. The dinner also featured a keynote address from Rev. John Nunes, president and chief executive officer of Lutheran World Relief, and remarks from Kate O’Beirne, National Review’s Washington Editor, who accepted the Acton Institute Faith & Freedom Award in honor of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. Excerpt from Rev. Sirico’s speech: Today we find institution after institution “in the...

First posted on the PowerBlog by Brittany Hunter, and picked up by a number of other prominent blogs, the “How Not to Help the Poor” Acton video short has collected over eight thousand YouTube hits. The video has only been on the YouTube site for just over a couple of weeks. The clip is from the Acton Institute’s Effective Stewardship Curriculum titled “Fellow Man.” Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish also posted mented on “How Not to Help the Poor”...