Anyone who’s been to Detroit in recent years knows it’s a mess. Acres and acres of abandoned houses, a population decline of 25% in the past 10 years, an astronomical crime rate, and the city is literally leaking money to the tune of some $200 million in two months. Back in March, Gov. Rick Snyder appointed bankruptcy attorney Kevyn Orr as the city’s emergency financial manager, and Orr has just released his report on the city’s financial state. Before we...

Values & Capitalism, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, has published a primer of sorts entitled, Economic Growth: Unleashing the Potential of Human Flourishing. The text is just over 100 pages, and gives the reader a thoughtful, concise and essential source on free market economics and its correlation to human flourishing and economic growth. Authors Edd S. Noell, Stephen L. S. Smith and Bruce G. Webb say this about their work: [T]he core proposition of this book is that...

Those who’ve attended Acton University in the past know that the Evening Speakers are memorable, uplifting and often the highlight of the day for many. This year, one speaker is Marina Nemat, currently teaching at the University of Toronto. Nemat is set to speak on her book, Prisoner of Tehran. The memoir details her imprisonment, with a life sentence, at age 16 in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran during the Khomeini Regime. While the memoir, by its nature, is...

In Abraham Kuyper’s recently translated sermon, “Rooted & Grounded,” he explains that the church is both “organism” and “institution,” drawing from both nature and the work of human hands. Pointing to Ephesians 3:17, he writes that, “the church of the Lord is one loaf, dough that rise according to its nature but nevertheless kneaded with human hands, and baked like bread.” Yet, as he goes on to note, this two-fold requirement is not limited to the church, but also applies...

“I escaped physically, I haven’t escaped psychologically,” says Shin Dong-hyuk. His remarkable journey out of a deadly North Korean prison to freedom is chronicled in Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. Shin didn’t escape for freedom. He had little knowledge of such a concept. He had heard that outside the prison, and especially outside North Korea, meat was available to eat. Shin was born at Camp 14 in 1982 and was strictly forbidden to leave because of the sins...

Over at Think Christian today, I lend some broader perspective concerning the link between money and happiness occasioned by a piece on The Atlantic on some research that challenged some of the accepted scholarly wisdom on the subject. The Bible is our best resource for getting the connection between material and spiritual goods right. I conclude in the TC piece, “As Jesus put it, ‘life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.'” Or to put it another way, we...

I’m a contributor to this month’s edition of Cato Unbound, on the topic of “Conservative-Libertarian Fusionism.” The forum consists of four lead essays from the panelists followed by ad hoc discussion. The first four essays are up: “The State of the Debate” by Jacqueline Otto“An Unequal Treaty” by Jeremy Kolassa“The Death of Fusionism” by Clark Ruper“Against Confusionism: Liberty and Civil Society” by Jordan Ballor Read more about the contributors and be sure to check out the pieces and follow the...

There are currently two sets of laws in America: laws that apply to everyone and laws that apply to everyone except for friends of the Obama administration. In January I wrote about how the executive branch had argued that the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 should be broadly interpreted in order to impose criminal liability for actions that indirectly result in a protected bird’s death. The administration used that reasoning to file criminal charges against three panies. The U.S....

Not content to trample only the religious freedom side of the First Amendment, the federal government has decided to ignore the free speech side too. As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reports, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have joined together to mandate that virtually every college and university in the United States establish unconstitutional speech codes that violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent. Ina letter sent yesterday to the University of Montanathat...

The horrific factory collapse in Bangladesh, now surpassing 1,100 in total deaths, has caused many to ponder how we might prevent such tragedies in the future, leading to plenty of ideological introspection about economic development and free trade. Describing the situation as “neither too simple nor plex,” Brian Dijkema encourages a healthy mix of confidence and caution. With folks calling for plete take-down of global capitalism on one end and elevating stiff pro-market arguments on the other, Dijkema reminds us...