As the U.S. school year wound to a close, teachers unions waged statewide strikes in West Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma, and inspired associated teacher strikes in Colorado, Kentucky, and North Carolina. The walkouts, celebrated by the media as the “Red State Revolt,” received adulatory media coverage despite keeping millions of children out of school for bined total of more than a month. From across the Atlantic, the social democracy of Germany offered a much different response to teacher strikes. This...

Two paths confront someone faced with an unwanted reality: reform or denial. With a report set to expose persistently high levels of corruption among its member states, the EU chose the latter option, its critics say. EU member states, programs, practices, institutions, and leaders stand accused of everything from bribery to larceny, from rigging the bidding process to influence peddling. Years ago, the mitted to report on, and reform, such practices. Instead, the EU chose to scupper the report. “In...

In just the last year, the regulatory apparatus of the federal government has endured a range of healthy threats and corrections. Approximately1,579 regulatory actions have been withdrawn or delayed, according to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and that wave is set to continue. “Agencies plan to finalize three deregulatory actions for every new regulatory action” this fiscal year, a recent report noted. “We’re here today for one single reason,” said President Trump said last December, holding a pair...

In 1865, W. Stanley Jevons predicted that with coal reserves of 90 billion tons, England would run out within 100 years. Today, the country has between three trillion and 23 trillion ton,enough to last Britain for centuries. In 1914, the Bureau of Mines fretted that with a total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels, the U.S. only had about a ten-year supply of oil. Today, a hundred years later, we’re estimated to have36 billion barrels left in the ground....

Frequent visitors to this blog know that the Acton Institute is rooted in a mission to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles. Over the years, our visitors and supporters have begged for an easy way to share this mission and Acton’s core teachings. Last week, our email subscribers got the first look at our newest short film series meeting that need: the inaugural six episodes of The Good Society. The Good...

I saw Incredibles 2 over the Father’s Day weekend, and just like its predecessor, there’s a lot to ponder beneath the surface of this animated film. In the real world we’ve had to wait 14 years, but the sequel picks up basically where the original left off. As the Rev. Jerry Zandstra wrote of the original, “litigiousness and mediocrity are some of the biggest obstacles in our culture. The propensity to settle every dispute by legal action undermines values, such...

Imagine if you could own pany that had the ability to print money—literally to create the equivalent of U.S. dollars out of thin air. Here’s how it could work: pany prints it own form of currency and sends it to another firm where the newly created pseudo-money is used to purchase assets. Because of supply and demand (and a bit of investor speculation), the buying drives up the asset’s price. After the price has risen, pany then sells the asset...

National funding of health care has produced a fresh crisis in Europe. Not merely the never-ending “winter crisis” in the NHS each year, but a crisis of conscience for Catholic health care providers. The Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, recognizing the unborn child’s inalienable right to life. With alarming speed, abortion has gone from illegal to mandatory. According to the (UK) Catholic Herald: Ireland’s Taoiseach [Prime Minister] has said that hospitals with...

Americans are known forworking longer hours and taking less vacation time than their counterparts in the industrialized world. In response, many are quick to decry this fact as evidence of age-old desperation and newfound decadence. If people are working long and hard, there must be problem.But is this the only possible explanation? For Benjamin Hunnicutt, professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa, the answer is a simple and resounding “yes.” Work has e a “modern religion,” he writes,...

On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Tyler Groenendal, Foundation Relations Coordinator at Acton, speaks with Michael J. Clark, Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, on the morality and importance of free trade. Then, on the Upstream segment, Bruce Edward Walker talks to Jim Person, author of the bookImaginative Conservatism: The Letters of Russell Kirk, about who Russell Kirk is and why he is still important today. Check out these additional resources on this week’s podcast topics: Read “Trump’s Tariffs...