This is the second in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the serieshere. The Acton Institute was fortunate to have Russell Kirk serve in an advisory capacity from the founding of the institute up until the time of his death. Throughout his career, Kirk was a champion of virtues, whichhe defined as “the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence,” particularly qualities of...

One of the preeminent international analysts and students of the transatlantic area, Walter Ze’ev Laqueur, died Sunday at the age of 97. Born on May 26, 1921, in what was then Breslau, Germany (and now Wrocław, Poland), he fled his homeland days before Kristallnacht; his family would die in the Holocaust. He moved to an Israeli kibbutz, to London, and eventually to the United States – moving as seamlessly from journalism, to foreign affairs, to academia. He spoke a half-dozen...

On this Episode of Radio Free Acton, Dan Churchwell, Director of Program Outreach at Acton, speaks with Nathan Hitchcock, education entrepreneur, about the role of character development and virtue in education, and what the future of education might look like. Then, Bruce Edward Walker talks to John J. Miller, Director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College and writer for National Review, about John’s new anthology “Reading Around: Journalism on Authors, Artists, and Ideas.” They discuss some of the...

Marxism taught that religion is the opiate of the people and tried to indoctrinate children in atheism from their earliest days. Yet a socialist party in Germany has erected a billboard stating, “Jesus would have voted for us.” The fifth-place party in the German Bundestag, Die Linke (“The Left”), “is the direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which held East Germany in an iron grip for many decades,” writes Kai Weiss of the Austrian Economics Center....

Note: This is post #95 in a weekly video series on basic economics. Before it went bankrupt in 2001, many of Enron’s employees had most or all of their retirement funds pany stock. When pany collapsed, as Alex Tabarrok notes, employees who were once multimillionaires ended up with almost nothing. They failed to heed the most basic rule of investing:Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Tabarrok explains why diversification is essential...

The news highlights from Theresa May’s speech this morning at the Conservative Party’s 2018 conference may be that she branded Labour the “Jeremy Corbyn Party” mitting her party to “ending austerity,” increasing spending on the NHS (which, she said, “embodies our principles as Conservatives more profoundly” than any other institution), and suspending the national gasoline tax for the ninth year – a move that saved British taxpayers £9 billion a year. But there’s a section noteworthy for its rarity in...

With the Trump administration’s announcement of a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, some free traders are breathing a sigh of relief, as others investigate and discern the more detailed pros and cons and technical implications across workers, products, and industries. “The tentative pact, which Congress must approve, spares auto makers from costly tariffs on cars imported from Canada and Mexico,” write Chester Dawson and Adrienne Roberts in the Wall Street Journal,” a major relief for an industry that...

The beloved singer known as “The French Sinatra” died on Monday at the age of 94. “Charles Aznavour deserves to be remembered, not just a legendary artist, but as a great fighter for historical truth and freedom,” and property rights, writes Marcin Rzegocki at the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Transatlantic website. Marcin writes that Aznavour remembered Christians persecuted during the Armenian genocide, as well as modern victims of ISIS: All of Europe has been grief-stricken over the death of...

This is the first in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the series here. How can human society form and raise up virtuous people? In the Summer/Fall 1982 issue of Modern Age, Russell Kirk explored this perennial question in an essay titled, “Virtue: Can It Be Taught?” Kirk defined virtues as “the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence,” particularly qualities of “moral...

Amazon recently announced pany will pay all of its U.S. employees a minimum of $15 an hour—more than double the federal minimum wage of $7.25. “We listened to our critics, thought hard about what we wanted to do, and decided we want to lead,” said Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. “We’re excited about this change and encourage petitors and other large employers to join us.” The decision is a smart move for Amazon. Unfortunately, the pany wants to force...