Today was the day for our event highlighting the growing problem of human trafficking, and a great panel discussion it was; we’ll be posting video from the event soon. In the meantime, you’ll have to be satisfied with the following clip, featuring Acton Communications Specialist Elise Hilton. She joinedhost Emily Linnert on WOOD TV 8‘s Daybreak show here in our hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan to discuss the human trafficking crisis. ...

20th Century historian Dumas Malone praised Thomas Jefferson as the exemplar of liberty. “To all who cherish freedom and abhor tyranny in any form, [Jefferson] is an abiding hope that springs eternal,” declared Malone. Jefferson crafted our creed as Americans and once wrote, “Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.” In the April issue of Carolina Journal, I review Long Journey with Mr. Jefferson. You can read the review on page 20 of the issue...

Like the proverbial sword of Damocles, the Obamacare deadline looms. Today is the last day to sign up…sort of. I’ll explain that momentarily. First, let’s look at the proverb mentioned above, lest there be any misunderstanding. As classics scholar Daniel Mendelsohn says, there is often confusion as to exactly what this allusion means. The real point of the story is very clearly a moral parable. It’s not just, oh, something terrible is going to happen, but it’s about realizing that...

Today at Ethika Politika, I review The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd: Finding Christ on the Buddha’s Path by Addison Hodges Hart: Addison Hodges Hart, a retired pastor and university chaplain, offersinThe Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherda wonderful exercise parative religion, examining mon ground that can be found in spiritual practice between Christianity and Buddhism. Hart focuses on the ten ox-herding icons of Zen, originating in China by the master Kakuan and panied by his verse and mentary. Hart, then,...

Critics of homeschooling have long maintained that it fails to inculcate students with the civic virtues necessary to maintain our republican form of democracy. But a study finds that when es to willingness to extend basic civil liberties to people who hold views with which one disagrees, homeschooled students are more tolerant than their peers: Scholar Albert Cheng’s just-published fascinating and provocative study provides one of the first solid portions of empirical evidence about whether the homeschooled e more or...

A United Nations panel recently released a report on the single most important environmental problem in the world today — and yet you’ve probably read nothing about it in the news. Instead, you’ve likely heard about another U.N. report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That report claims that global warming could have a “widespread impact” by the year 2100. Yet in 2012 millions of people died — one in eight of total global deaths — as a result...

At the Heritage Foundation’s Foundry blog, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal talks with Genevieve Wood about challenges he faces from the Obama administration on Second Amendment rights, energy development, economic freedom and religious liberty issues. Days after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in two religious liberty cases challenging an Obamacare mandate, Jindal said he found the government’s actions troubling. “America didn’t create religious liberty. Religious liberty created America,” he said. “It’s very dangerous for the federal government to presume they...

In this short talk, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute, offers some general observations about this week’s meeting between President Obama and Pope Francis at the Vatican, and reflects on the differences in philosophy that make a Presidential/Papal alliance such as what occurred during the time of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II unlikely. ...

Admittedly, this writer attended a viewing of Noah last week with trepidation. A March 17 New Yorker profile on director Darren Aronofsky gave good cause for suspicion the film would be yet another Hollywood environmentalist screed wherein humanity is depicted as a cancer on God’s creation. Instead, the film (largely) avoids such proclamations in favor of some pretty intense – make that very intense – family psychodrama and a spun-from-whole-cloth story involving Watchers, clan rivalry and allusions to other Old...

Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties are panies with consciences. It is that sense of morality that has put both panies before the Supreme Court right now. panies, in accordance to their understanding of right and wrong, do not want to be forced (by government mandate) to pay for employees’ birth control and abortions. Should the government have a say in pany’s conscience? Ben & Jerry’s, the Vermont-based ice cream makers, have a conscience. Their mission has three parts: product,...