The New Totalitarian Temptation “is the best book ever written about the European Union,” says John Fonte, who just reviewed it for National Review. Acton’s director of international outreach, Todd Huizinga, wrote Totalitarian Temptation based on his experience with the U.S. Foreign Service in Brussels, Luxembourg, and Germany. As an American who spent two decades living and working in Europe, he has a few things to say about the European Union and its decline into a soft utopia. Fonte, a...

Today is the National Day of Prayer, an annual day of observance celebrated by Americans of various faiths. Here are five facts you should know about the day when people are asked “to turn to God in prayer and meditation.” 1. The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States...

Late last year Pope Francis ordered the first ever external audit of Vatican accounts. After a series of embarrassing leaks and scandals, the pontiff promised to make the Vatican’s finances more transparent. But recently it was announced that audit was “suspended immediately.” In the Detroit News, the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute, considers what this portends for the Vatican’s financial reform: I arrived in Rome to participate in a conference on Catholic social thought...

“Money has not only the character of money,” says Samuel Gregg in this week’s Acton Commentary, “but it also has a productive character which monly call capital.” Like all medieval clergy, Olivi and Bernardine fiercely opposed usury. “Usury,” Bernardine wrote, “concentrates the money of munity in the hands of a few, just as if all the blood in a man’s body ran to his heart and left his other organs depleted.” Yet the same Bernardine also invested time in explaining...

“The fruit of our labor is fellowship. munity. It’s relationship.” Global trade has suddenly emerged as a hot conversationin the current election cycle, with candidates likeDonald Trump and Bernie Sanders leading the charge toward severe protectionism, while the others quietly shrug and nod along accordingly. Voters of all ideological stripes areresponding with fervor, calling for more trade barriers and increased manipulation of prices and wages, hoping to insulate the American economy from our global neighbors and “keep what’s ours.” Such...

Lord Acton was a man of multitudes: he had a scholar’s library of about 67,000 volumes, his notes and manuscripts in the Cambridge library fill some 50,000 pages, and he produced 200 definitions of liberty. Yet despite his productivity, the man who was once called “the most learned Englishman alive” never published a book. At Open Letters Monthly, Luciano Mangiafico takes a in-depth look at the fascinating life of Lord Acton: Contradictions in Acton’s life and views abound: although he...

At Catholic Vote, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg joins the web site’s political director Josh Mercer to look into the reasons why socialist and Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders “was invited by ‘the Vatican’ (actually: Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences) to speak on e inequality.” Gregg and Mercer also discuss whether socialism is on the rise here in the United States. Tune in here. ...

Yesterday was both Star Wars Day (May the Fourth) and the day that Donald Trump became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican party. I reflected on the confluence of these two phenomena in a short essay on what Mr. Trump might learn from Emperor Palpatine. It is not well-known, perhaps, but Palpatine was instrumental in creating the so-called Book of Sith, which includes a treatise by him on “Absolute Power.” I draw a couple of lessons for Mr. Trump...

Evangelicals are known for referring to America as a “Christian nation,” sometimes as a nod to its basic demographic disposition, but more often as a deeper theological statement about the country’sfounding and spiritual status. Whether viewed through the mundane misapplications of Old Testament scripture or the more highly entrenched revisionism of Christian “historians” like David Barton, there is a popular view among evangelicals that America has access to a sort of pre-New Testament covenant.Given such a mindset, we shouldn’t be...

Five year ago, Roman Ostriakov, a homeless Ukrainian living in Italy, attempted to steal cheese and sausages worth $4.50 (€4.07). Before he could leave the supermarket, though, Ostriakov was caught and convicted of theft. He was ordered to pay a fine of $115 (€100) and spend six months in jail. But Italy’s supreme court has overturned the conviction, writing: The condition of the defendant and the circumstances in which the merchandise theft took place prove that he took possession of...