Between raging inflation and declining markets, consumers have much to worry about. What they shouldn’t worry about is whether there are answers at hand. Some new books provide hope. Read More… If you attended Acton University, you saw the treasure trove of books for sale. Several of those books made it onto both my credit card and my summer reading list. Even if you weren’t able to join us at AU, you can still find most of the books here....

Season 4 of the Netflix mega-hit still focuses on the reality of supernatural evil, but has added a dose of natural evil as well. But where’s the supernatural good? Read More… The final installment of the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things was released on July 1. According to Variety, season 4’s first installment “of the Duffer Brothers’ hit sci-fi series was viewed for 287 million hours during the week of May 23–29, landing in the No. 1 position.” The...

On July 5, 1852, nearly a decade before the start of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass, a freed slave and statesman-abolitionist, offered a profound speech on seeing the Fourth of July through the eyes of a slave. The speech monly known as “What to a slave is the 4th of July?” — illuminates the drastic disconnect between ourfounding principles and the severe oppression of slavery that somehow managed to endure. While the specific evils in question have thankfully been abolished,...

Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic masterpiece shines a light on how attempts to subvert American institutions in the name of a higher, personal justice can fail calamitously. In the end, human nature will not be subverted. Read More… This month the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the premiere of The Godfather, an important movie, a movie we at some point got in the habit of calling iconic, and we might remember it made stars of...

Requiescat in pace. Read More… Tony Sirico, the renowned actor and older brother of Acton Institute co-founder and president emeritus, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, passed away on July 8, 2022. He was 79 years old. Watch the livestream of the funeral of Tony Sirico on Wednesday, July 13, at 10:30am ET here: Sirico was best known for his role as “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieriin HBO’sThe Sopranos, for which he won twoScreen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in...

In his new book, the author of The End of History attempts to explain how liberalism is threatened by illiberal elements on the left and right. But flaws in his analysis almost guarantee that this is not the end of the discussion. Read More… In Liberalism and Its Discontents, Francis Fukuyama aims to defend liberal political ideas and institutions against rising and now entrenched detractors from the postliberal left and the right. As he notes, “liberalism is under severe threat...

The Daily Wire’s new documentary offers disturbing realities but only one answer to a question that raises many more. What would a sequel look like? Read More… “Nature always tells us the truth, even if we don’t want to hear it.” So begins the latest cinematic offering from the Daily Wire,What Is a Woman? The documentary is stirring up controversy with its sarcastic cultural analysis and skillful showcasing of extreme social absurdity. Conservative mentator Matt Walsh’s dry style edic narration...

Xi Jinping’s recent victory lap in Hong Kong does not bode well for the future of civil rights and freedoms there, as the “one country, two systems” agreement made with Great Britain in 1997 appears irreparably broken. Read More… On January 1, 1997, Hong Kong, effectively seized by Great Britain in war a century before, reverted to Chinese rule. Only recently liberated from the madness of Mao Zedong’s rule, Beijing promised to preserve Hong Kong’s separate “system” for 50 years....

Roe v. Wade has been overturned and bad arguments in defense of unrestricted abortion abound. What everyone needs now is a little history lesson. Read More… As I was watching a film with my son the other day, we began to hear chanting below us. We looked out the window and saw protesters marching in the streets shouting, “Hey Hey! Ho Ho! The white man has got to go!” The protesters were themselves white. The protest was in response to...

In his new book, F.H. Buckley offers a vision of a “progressive conservatism” that sure sounds like the traditional Grand Old Party platform. Not that that’s a bad thing. Read More… Sisyphus was the first conservative, Claremont Review of Books editor William Voegeli wryly observes, because the lot of the conservative is one of short-lived, temporary victories. Conservatives certainly have no shortage of examples. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act didn’t even last 20 years, made obsolete by Obergefell v....