Over at the University Bookman today, I review John Lanchester’s novel Capital. I mend the book. I don’t explore it in the review, “Capital Vices and Commercial Virtues,” but for those who have been following the antics of Banksy, there is a similar performance artist character in the novel that has significance for the development of the narrative. As I write in the review, the vice of envy, captured in the foreboding phrase, “We Want What You Have,” animates the...

Our ideal as Christians is a social world that passes everyday life but is oriented toward God and the good, beautiful, and true in all its aspects, says James Kalb. “In our time,” says Kalb, “the phrases ‘culture of life’ and ‘civilization of love’ have been used to refer to basic aspects of such a world, but Christendom seems the best name for it overall.” Has this ideal of Christendom gone away? Christendom may be gone as a matter of...

Does promoting limited government require abandoning mitment to the poor? Ryan Messmore,whose answer is a firm “no”, argues that non-government institutions can provide personalized assistance to help individuals fix relational problems, e poverty and lead healthy lives: Calls for limited government are often mistakenly equated with a disregard for people in need. This flawed line of reasoning assumes that poverty is primarily a material problem and that government bears the primary responsibility for solving it by increasing welfare and entitlement...

Russell Kirk addresses the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan – 1.10.94 On Saturday, November 9, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is hosting a conference on the 60th Anniversary of Russell Kirk’sThe Conservative Mind.The conference, which will examine the impact of Kirk’s monumental book—which both named and shaped the nascent conservative movement in the United States—is to be held at the Eberhard Center on the downtown Grand Rapids campus of Grand Valley State University, which Acton supporters will recognize as the...

Two writers over at Aleteia mented on the current state of affairs with the help of Samuel Gregg’s latest, Tea Party Catholic. Brantly Millegan, Assistant Editor for the English edition of Aleteia, write a post titled, ‘Obama’s Ordinary, No-Big-Deal “Whopper.”‘ He discusses the now infamous words President Obama spoke in 2010, “[I]f Americans like their doctor, they will keep their doctor. And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that...

My wife despises Sid Meier. She’s never met him, nor would she even recognize his name. But she knows someone is responsible for creating the source of my addiction. For over twenty years I’ve spent (or wasted, as my wife would say) countless hours playing Civilization, Meier’s award-winning strategy game. Every time I play the game I enter an almost trance-like state plete immersion. According to positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, what I’m experiencing in that moment is known as “flow.”...

I and Jordan Ballor have mented onEnder’s Game this week (here and here), but the story is literally packed with insightful themes, many of which touch upon issues relevant to Acton’s core principles. Another such issue is that of the problems with Neo-Malthusianism, the belief that overpopulation poses such a serious threat to civilization and the environment that population control measures e ethical imperatives. Such a perspective tends to rely on one or both of the following fallacies: a zero-sum...

Drawing on some themes I explore about the role of the church in providing material assistance inGet Your Hands Dirty, today at Political Theology Today I look at the first parliamentary speech of the new Dutch King Willem-Alexander. In “The Dutch King’s Speech,” I argue that the largely ceremonial and even constitutionally-limited monarchy has something to offer modern democratic polities, in that it provides a forum for public leadership that is not directly dependent on popular electoral support. In the...

“We hear a lot about ‘too big to fail’ banks and other financial institutions,” says Jordan Ballor in this week’s Acton Commentary. “But what about a federal government whose size and scope have e so vast as to crowd out civil institutions?” The existence of banks that are too big to fail is in significant ways the result of the actions of a government that is too big to flourish. Even a cursory glance at the federal spending figures over...

Mark Scibilia-Carver, in a National Catholic Reporter “Viewpoint” piece, decries the nationwide call ing weekend for Catholics to financially support the Archdiocese for the Military Services, which serves the entire U.S. military. That includes “more than 220 installations in 29 countries, patients in 153 V.A. Medical Centers, and federal employees serving outside the boundaries of the USA in 134 countries. Numerically, the AMS is responsible for more than 1.8 million men, women, and children.” Why is Scibilia-Carver upset? He believes...