Whittaker Chambers began Witness, the classic account of his time in the American Communist underground, with the declaration: “In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.” The line was most of all a deep recognition of the power of God to redeem what was once dead. Witness was a landmark account of the evils of Communism but most importantly a description of the bankruptcy of freedom outside of the sacred. “For Chambers, God was always the prime mover in...

There’s an old saying to the effect: “Show me a man’s checkbook and I’ll show you what’s important to him.” It may not be quite the same as a checkbook, but NPR’s Planet Money passes along what a receipt from the federal government might look like for an average taxpayer (HT): As Third Way, who put together the taxpayer receipt, argues: An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention...

In the “Wealth Inequality Mirage” on RealClearMarkets, Diana Furchtgott-Roth looks at the campaign waged by “levelers” who exaggerate and distort statistics about e inequality to advance their political ends. The gap, she says, is the “main battle” in the Nov. 2 election. “Republicans want to keep current tax rates to encourage businesses to expand and hire workers,” she writes. “Democrats want to raise taxes for the top two brackets, and point to rising e inequality as justification.” This is a...

I’ll admit – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted a Global Warming Consensus Alert because, frankly, any “consensus” that existed was blown apart by the release of the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit e-mails, which revealed a whole bunch of underhanded activity on the part of scientists promoting the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. What’s the point anymore? The unshakeable climate “consensus” has been shown to be the fraud that it always was, and the catastrophic climate...

An interesting call for papers from H-Net, “Almshouses in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the Present – Comparisons and Peculiarities”: Within the field of poor relief and welfare, research interests have recently shifted towards the history of private charity and charitable foundations. Among these institutions, which contributed to the early modern and modern mixed economy of welfare, the almshouse played an important role as a particular form of social housing. Almshouses originated in the Middle Ages and many...

Robert Joustra, writing on the website of the Canadian think tank Cardus, has published a thoughtful review of Jordan Ballor’s Ecumenical Babel: Confusing Economic Ideology and the Church’s Social Witness. The reviewer understands that when, … controversial social science infiltrates ecclesial confessions, twin dangers promising the integrity of the Gospel, and splitting the church on political and economic issues. Ecumenical superstructures claiming to speak with ecclesial authority on technical matters worry me, even when technical experts are enlisted. The point...

Joe Carter discusses “What the Market Economy Needs to Be Moral” today over at First Things: On the Square. He rightly points to the twin errors of collectivism and atomistic individualism, each of which have been soundly criticized in Catholic Social Teaching, for instance. I do wonder, though, given that Joe acknowledges the role of free individuals (not to be abstracted from their social relationships and responsibilities, of course) whether we need a “third way” as he proposes, or simply...

Acton’s Research Director in the American Spectator: Europe’s Broken Economies By Samuel Gregg During September this year, much of Europe descended into mild chaos. Millions of Spaniards and French went on strike (following, of course, their return from six weeks vacation) against austerity measures introduced by their governments. Across the continent, there are deepening concerns about possible sovereign-debt defaults, stubbornly-high unemployment, Ireland’s renewed banking woes, and the resurgence of right-wing populist parties (often peddling left-wing economic ideas). Indeed, the palpable...

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I remember German reunification and reflect on its relevance for the present. Twenty years ago this Sunday, East and West Germany reunited, capping one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern history. Communism in the Soviet Union and its eastern European satellites had collapsed; the oppressed nations of Europe rejoined the “free world.” My generation was the last to straddle the two worlds, pre- and post-Soviet Union. When I was in elementary and high school,...

Today at Mere Comments I highlight what I’m calling the “Neo-Anabaptist temptation.” Check it out. ...