In a recent interview on The Soul of Enterprise Radio Show, Acton President and Co-founder Rev. Robert Sirico spoke with Ron Baker and Ed Kless about the free economy and Acton’s unique role in upholding individual freedom and human dignity. In the first segment, Rev. Sirico discussed his book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy as well as its recent translation into Italian. Additionally, Ed asked Rev. Sirico about his meeting with Pope Francis. Rev....

Does tradition harm progress? Acton’s director of research, Samuel Gregg, in a recent article for Library of Law and Liberty, describes “tradition” as the handing down of beliefs, cultural molds, and historical ways of thinking and living, but also as a means to promoting human flourishing in renewing civilization. He affirms that valuable wisdom that can be found in looking to past traditions, including traditions on either end of the political spectrum. In his search to define tradition and answer...

On Monday, Great Britain stood poised to enact Brexit with Her Majesty’s blessing. UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced that her government would send the letter officially triggering the UK’s exit from the European Union, in accordance with Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, on March 29 – more than nine months after the British people voted to extract themselves from the global governance institution. The notification will touch off a two-year-long period of negotiations that will determine the UK’s...

On this edition of Radio Free Acton, international trade attorney and Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar Scott e joins us to give us the real story on the benefits of international trade for the United States, and dispels some myths about the impacts of trade on U.S. industry and consumers. Often, free trade is portrayed as the enemy of American workers, stealing away jobs and creating massive trade deficits. e explains that while free trade does contribute to the process of...

What is “social justice”? For some, it represents an ideal or a vision of a certain kind of society. For others, it’s a placeholder for particular government policies. For others, it’s a mere marker of ideology. For Michael Novak, the answer is “none of the above.” In his final book, Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is,published prior to his recent passing, Novak argues that social justice is a virtue — a “habit of the heart” that is “embodied...

Embed from Getty Images What’s the story? Last week, numerous media outlets falselyreported that the Trump administration proposed 2018 budget would eliminate charities like Meals on Wheels. The reports also claimedthat White House budget director Mick Mulvaney had said during a press conference that Meals on Wheels “doesn’t work.” (Representative headlines included Time’s “Trump’s Budget Would Kill a Program That Feeds 2.4 Million Senior Citizens” and Slate’s article: “Trump’s budget director says Meals on Wheels doesn’t work.” What is “Meals...

Embed from Getty Images “We’re now like David Foster Wallace’s fish,” said Judge Neil Gorsuch earlier today in his nomination hearing. “We’re surrounded by the rule of law, it’s in the fabric of our lives.” Gorsuch made a similar claim in an article on “Law’s Irony” for theHarvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. The judge wondered “whether the law’s greatest irony might just be the hope obscured by the cynic’s shadow” and “whether cynicism about the law flourishes so...

In a recent article for the Federalist, Samuel Gregg discusses Pope Francis’s ments on populism. Pope Francis explicitly denounces populism saying: “Populism is evil and ends badly, as the past century shows.” However, Gregg points out that many populist sentiments could be attributed to this Pope: Nor are some of Francis’s principal supporters averse to invoking populist language when defending his program for the Catholic Church. Consider, for example, Archbishop Victor Fernández. The Argentine theologian is close enough to the...

Last week a group of 106 faith leaders have collaborated on a letter they have signed and sent to the Democrat and Republican leadership of both houses of Congress. In this week’s Acton Commentary, Victor V. Claar explains that it hasn’t been aid that has lifted people out of poverty, but trade and access to markets. While many of the world’s politicians would like to take credit for cutting extreme global poverty in half in just 20 years, and the...

Note: This is post #25 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Suppose there is a mild winter on the West Coast and a harsh winter on the East Coast, says Alex Tabarrok, in this video by Marginal Revolution University. As a result of the weather, people on the East Coast will demand more home heating oil, bidding up the price. Under the price system, entrepreneurs will be incentivized to take oil from where it has lower value on...