Rev. Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is an Eastern Orthodox priest and served as Executive Editor of the Acton Institute (2016-2021), editing Religion & Liberty, the Powerblog, and its transatlantic website. He has extensively researched the Alt-Right. Previously, he worked for LifeSiteNews and FrontPageMag.com, where he wrote three books including Party of Defeat (with David Horowitz, 2008). His work has appeared at DailyWire.com, National Review, The American Spectator, The Guardian, Daily Caller, National Catholic Register, Spectator USA, FEE Online, RealClear Policy, The Blaze, The Stream, American Greatness, Aleteia, Providence Magazine, Charisma, Jewish World Review, Human Events, Intellectual Takeout, CatholicVote.org, Issues & Insights, The Conservative, Rare.us, and The American Orthodox Institute. His personal websites are therightswriter.com and RevBenJohnson.com. His views are his own.
Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
March 24, 2020
However unique their history or circumstances, communities experiencing high unemployment are pockmarked by the same sights: shuttered factories, rows of abandoned homes bulldozed or set ablaze by arsonists, and a debilitating hopelessness.
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March 20, 2020
With COVID-19 ushering in a new era of social distancing, the idea of a mass demonstration seems as quaint as a delivery from the milkman. However, as recently as last month the memory of France’s
gilet jaunes—the yellow-vested protesters who blocked French intersections over proposed fuel taxes—inspired Spanish farmers to block streets and wring ill-conceived concessions from the government.
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March 19, 2020
The most ubiquitous phrase popularized by the coronavirus epidemic, “social distancing,” carries connotations of shunning or anti-social behavior. The isolation of the elderly particularly tugs at our heartstrings. The widely shared photo of 88-year-old Dorothy Campbell speaking through a nursing home’s window to her 89-year-old husband, Gene, poignantly depicts the deep-seated need for human contact amid the obstructions of anti-virus protocols.
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March 18, 2020
Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has invited people around the world to take a sober approach to life and social relations. But it has also spread a potentially worse contagion throughout society: panic.
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March 12, 2020
The UK’s exit from the European Union opened a new era of liberty by empowering the British people to control their own destiny. However, state monopolies undermine their newfound autonomy by removing them from key decisions that affect their lives.
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March 11, 2020
After being thrown out of a Cleveland church that doubles as a homeless shelter, a vagrant used a pistol to force his way back inside. Unfortunately, the gun-wielding intruder wasn’t the biggest threat to the facility’s survival: Its own government was.
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March 06, 2020
Bernie Sanders holds a pagan view of charity. I mean that not in a pejorative but in a denotative sense: Sanders’ preference for government programs over private philanthropy echoes that of ancient pagan rulers.
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March 06, 2020
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intended the Green New Deal to cement her position as the intellectual leader of the democratic socialist movement, but even passing scrutiny caused the $93 trillion proposal to fade into obscurity.
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March 04, 2020
During a congressional hearing late last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likened Christians who refuse to perform medical procedures that violate their religious beliefs to Klansmen, segregationists, and slaveholders. But in this week’s Acton Commentary, Rev.
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February 28, 2020
The Founding Fathers understood, in the words of John Adams, that “we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.” An Ivy League professor recently heard the same conclusion repeated by a Chinese Marxist.
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