Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
December 17, 2019
This year, California’s progressives decided to wage war on the nightmare of being your own boss. A new state law aimed at limiting the gig economy has already cost hundreds of people their jobs – and had a seriously harmful impact on women’s earnings and long-term happiness. Continue Reading...
December 16, 2019
What Churchill knew about tariffs could fill a bucket
Winston Churchill, like Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, has been the putative source of many a pseudonymous or misattributed quotation. However, one of his best-known aphorisms about taxes is authentic – but misunderstood. Continue Reading...
December 13, 2019
A British perspective on the UK’s 2019 general election
Voters in the UK gave Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party its largest majority in more than 30 years. With one seat yet to report, the Tories added a smashing 47 seats. Continue Reading...
December 12, 2019
How would Jeremy Corbyn change the UK?
American observers may know that Jeremy Corbyn wishes to fundamentally transform the British economy and reshape the special relationship between the U.S. and the UK. “Is it moral to confiscate people’s property and deny the elderly the right to control their own property?” Continue Reading...
December 12, 2019
Jeremy Corbyn would destroy the US-UK special relationship
Citizens across the UK are casting their votes in the 2019 general election. Jeremy Corbyn “seems in equal parts blind to the violence of socialism, the goodness of the West, and anti-Semitism in his own party,” I write in my new article for The American Spectator. Continue Reading...
December 10, 2019
Hugo Chavez and Jack London on why socialism kills
In an emotional story in the January 2020 issue of Reason, Jose Cordiero relays how “socialism killed my father” – through economic scarcity. His article highlights the life-and-death stakes of wealth creation. Continue Reading...
December 09, 2019
Samuel Gregg: Charles de Gaulle could have prevented the Brexit debate
The integration of Europe in the postwar era continues to roil politics continent-wide, most notably taking center stage in this week’s UK general election. Yet Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg writes that Charles de Gaulle could have spared Europe this future. Continue Reading...
December 09, 2019
The road to London Bridge is paved with self-loathing
The day after Thanksgiving, the world saw a murderous terrorist prevented from maximizing his death toll by desperate people armed with nothing more than personal courage, a narwhal tusk, and a fire extinguisher. Continue Reading...
December 06, 2019
Worthwhile listening: Vladimir Putin, school choice, and Michael Card
As you relax or workout this week, you can take Acton’s issues – and even some of the people of Acton – with you. Two podcasts, produced on different sides of the Atlantic, would make ideal listening. Continue Reading...
December 06, 2019
Chilling video captures the moment socialism morphs into anti-Semitism
“Anti-Semitism,” quipped nineteenth-century German socialist August Bebel, “is the socialism of fools.” However, a chilling new video shows that socialism helps prime leftists to espouse anti-Jewish sentiments in an instant.
The UK’s Labour Party in general, and party leader Jeremy Corbyn in particular, have long been accused of being indifferent to, or vaguely supportive of, anti-Semitism. Continue Reading...