On today’s Radio Free Acton we share an interview from Acton University with Chris Armstrong, Wheaton College Professor and author of the new book book Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C.S. Lewis. We take a look at the difference between modern and medieval Christians, and examine what makes a good story. Then we talk with RFA Chief Cultural Correspondent (and newly minted mentator at Forbes) Bruce Edward Walker on the 50th anniversary...

Acton Director of Programs and Education Paul Bonicelli appeared on yesterday’s edition ofMaking Money with Charles Payne on Fox Business Network, and spent some time talking about the current dire condition of Venezuela, and the socialist experiment that got the country there. You can view the clip below. ...

Note: This is the post #25, the final post in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Cabinet position:Administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Department:Small Business Administration Current Administrator:Linda McMahon Department Mission:“The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve petitive enterprise and...

Our society has grown increasingly transactional in its ways of thinking, whether about family, business, education, or politics. Everything we spend, steward, or invest — our money, time, and relationships — must somehow secure an immediate personal return or reward, lest it be cast aside as “wasteful.” As an overarching philosophy of life, such an approach fails not due only due to its narrow individualism, but also to its cramped obsession with scarcity, standing in stark contrast with the lavish...

In his Acton University lecture titled “Creation and the Image of God,” Scott Hahn began with the assertion that we often ask the wrong questions about the creation story in Genesis. Instead of focusing on scientific questions of exactly when God created and how, we should be asking what God created and why. These are questions of theological anthropology, i.e. the understanding of God that is necessary for the understanding of man. Hahn uses biblical theology in order to answer...

Note: This is post #41 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. We tend to assume profit—the bottom line—is the main motivation for a firm’s actions, says economist Alex Tabbarok. For most firms most of the time, this is a good assumption, especially in petitive market. This video by Marginal Revolution University explores how pany maximizes profit in petitive environment where there are many buyers and sellers. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend...

Students of the free market say that economics is merely human action. Economists also understand that policies have unintended consequences – such as reducing the number of children born in a nation. The Adam Smith Institute, based in London, has released a new report describing one such consequence due, in part, to central planning and overregulation. The British housing crisis has inadvertently discouraged women from having 157,000 children, its report finds. Young couples in the UK increasingly struggle to afford...

Campus Reform, a project of the Leadership Institute,recently interviewed students in Washington, D.C. to get their opinions on socialism. Not surprisingly, most of them were all for it. And also not surprisingly, most of them could not explain what they mean by socialism. While it’s tempting to mock these students for supporting an economic system they can’t define, I’m not sure those of us on the right side of the political spectrum can do any better. I remember hearing that...

Many might not even recognize the name “Russell Kirk,” and those who do often do not know the true impact of his contributions. Kirk quickly rose to prominence in American political discourse during the 1950s, but fell from the public eye following Barry Goldwater’s defeat in the 1964 presidential election, whom Kirk had firmly supported. But at this year’s Acton University, Bradley Birzer, a professor of history at Hillsdale College, and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies, outlined...

Many educated people – though perhaps not enough – know that it was medieval monks who preserved classical culture. Between their daily offices, the monks huddled in their cells by candlelight to copy the great cultural artifacts of Western civilization. But why did they preserve works that had been produced by, and often reflected, the pagan ethos of ancient Rome? In an essay for the August issue ofFirst Things, professor Rémi Bragueanswers questions such as: What is culture? How does...