Michael J. Totten has a new piece on his travels through Cuba, this one focused on rural Cuba. “Most of the Cuban landscape I saw is already deforested,” he writes. “It’s just not being used. It’s tree-free and fallow ex-farmland. I’ve never seen anything like it, though parts of the Soviet Union may have looked similar.” Economists refer to this sort of thing as “the tragedy of mons,” and nobody does it well as munists. Parts of the travelogue are...

Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico made an appearance on The Price of Business with host Kevin Price on Business 1110 KTEK in Houston, Texas. The conversation focused on the importance of liberty and the vital need to understand the foundations of our freedoms. You can listen to the interview via the audio player below. ...

Contrary to the spirit of cooperation and solidarity, a group of black students at the University of Michigan believe they should receive some sort of special treatment because they are black. While the students may have legitimate concerns regarding campus culture, making outrageous demands is the least effective means of asking the administration to take their concerns seriously. In fact, given their unreasonable and unrealistic expectations it would be best if all of these protesting black students simply transferred to...

Perhaps it’s because we Americans are still getting over Christmas, or talking about the Super Bowl, but National Religious Freedom Day doesn’t get a lot of press. But indeed: January 16 is National Religious Freedom Day, adopted originally by the state of Virginia and now remembered annually by the White House. Penned by Thomas Jefferson, the Statute for Religious Freedom reads, in part: Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall pelled to frequent or support any religious...

We’re scolded for blaming the poor, judging their lifestyle choices, says Elise Hilton in this week’s Acton Commentary. But what good can we do if we refuse to look at systemic issues? We are told that we are guilty of blaming the poor, judging their lifestyle choices. But what good can we do if we refuse to look at systemic issues that indeed cause poverty: irresponsible sexual choices, dropping out of school, a revolving door of men in women’s and...

While imprisoned by the Nazis at Tegel military prison, and shortly after learning of the last failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer penned a short poem for his friend, Eberhard Bethge, titled “Stations on the Road to Freedom.” e across the poem before, but in recently reading Eric Metaxas’ fine biography of the man, I was reminded of its power and potency in describing the essence of Christian freedom.It es all the pelling given its context, serving as...

The New York Times unwittingly highlights many of the points from the Acton Commentary, Maria Shriver’s Big, Big Government Rescue Plan For Women. In a piece entitled “Sarah’s Uncertain Path,” the Times takes a look at poverty in America, focusing on a pregnant 15 year old girl. Sarah’s family certainly has a rough go of it. And the Times would lead us to believe, just as the aforementioned Government Rescue Plan, that Sarah’s family and those like them are victims:...

The Nordic philosopher and priest Anders Chydenius (1729-1803) — the “Adam Smith of the North” — once asked: Would the Great Master, who adorns the valley with flowers and covers the cliff itself with grass and mosses, exhibit such a great mistake in man, his masterpiece, that man should not be able to enrich the globe with as many inhabitants as it can support? That would be a mean thought even in a Pagan, but blasphemy in a Christian, when...

The morality of the market, important as it is in a free society, says James Stoner, is not the only kind of morality that matters mon life: So is there a moral basis for the free market? Sure, but it is part of plex moral environment that rightly limits market freedom even as it supports it. The morality of the market, important as it is in a free society, should not be mistaken for the only kind of morality that...

wants to talk about disease and dysfunction. It’s not a medical condition, though; it’s an economic one. Far too few governments rein in their countries’ bloated welfare states before disaster strikes. As a result, some citizens eventually suffer the economic equivalent of a heart attack: wrenching declines in living standards as they are victimized by unsustainable programs’ endgame. Greece and the city of Detroit are only the most recent grim examples. The Dutch, Boskin says, seem to be making a...