This is the fifth in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the serieshere. During the twentieth century, one man in particular took it upon himself to make a project of defining and perhaps re-invigorating an American conservatism which the prominent cultural critic Lionel Trilling dismissed as “a series of irritable mental gestures.” I remember picking up a copy of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mindmany years ago. As...

The following article is written by Angel Fernández Álvarez and translated by Joshua Gregor. Juan de Mariana This October 31, I will give a conference entitled The Spanish School of the XVI and XVII Centuries at Harvard University, in order to explain in detail the “institutional framework” and the principles of growth upheld by the late Spanish scholastics. In the conference, organized by the Harvard Real Colegio Complutense, I will explain the importance of Christian humanism, which spread especially from...

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Dan Hugger, Research Associate at Acton, speaks with Larry Reed, President of the Foundation for Economic Education, about the question that seems to be cropping up everywhere nowadays: Was Jesus a socialist? Then, Bruce Edward Walker talks to James Matthew Wilson about his new volume of poetry and on why poetry is important today. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics: Read “Jesus would have voted socialist, says Germany’s Left”...

The fact that something is political does not mean that it is not religious, says Paul Marshall. Instead of describing something as political, not religious, we might should describe it as the political manipulation of religion, or the insincere use of religion: This stress that events are not religion but politics can lead to misunderstanding the nature of both religion and politics. It can be akin to saying that a table is not round but red. But tables can be...

It was in Brazil’s 2010 elections that the majority of the voters first learned about Silas Malafaia. It was also the election in which the left-wing president Lula da Silva reached the height of his political power. Lula was one of the most successful left-wing populist leaders of Latin America in the first two decades of the 21st century. He had all the pragmatism of a Tammany Hall boss. He could be applauded by a crowd of Communists one day...

Why do young people throughout the West have an increasingly positive view of socialism? The answer has been ferreted out between the lines of a survey recently conducted for the Charles Koch Institute. Young people’s infatuation with socialism remains one of the most lamented (or celebrated) facts of the cultural landscape – but both sides agree, it is an undeniable fact. Americans under the age of 30 hold a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism, according to a Gallup...

Tocqueville determined that the one defining factor in the United States was equality of condition, says John Wilsey in this week’s Acton Commentary. Tocqueville noticed that Americans apparently had the singular ability to prevent equality of conditions from yielding democratic despotism. Through voluntary associations, vigorous local government, a pursuit of self-interest rightly understood, and laws that were based on an accepted moral structure taught in disestablished church bodies, Americans were able to strike that critical balance between private interests and...

Note: This is post #97 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Warning for young people: having a college degree no longer guarantees you’ll be able to find a good job, much less have a promising career. Four-year college graduates with entry-level jobs actually earned more in 2000 than they’re earning today. Choosing a good career requires planning beyond getting a college education, says Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution University. In this video he explains why you’ll want to...

Yesterday was the birthday ofWilliam Penn, the influential English Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania. This year also marks the 300th anniversary of his death. Although Penn was an Englishman, he became, as Gary M. Galles says, the first great champion of American liberty. As Galles notes, When Charles II died, a large debt to Penn’s father was settled in 1681 by granting him what would e Pennsylvania. Penn implemented his authority over the colony in his 1682Frame of Government, Pennsylvania’s...

Since the War of Independence, the American self-image has set individual liberty against oligarchic power. Abraham Lincoln encapsulated this when he described the American experiment as a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Perhaps it was inevitable that populism, in the form of the People’s Party, was born on U.S. soil – and that, as it experiences a modern-day resurgence, it begins in the United States. The original Populists described themselves as “the plain people” fighting...