“If I had cash to spend on promoting the values and ideas and policies that I believed were best for this country, you can bet that I would be out finding talented directors, writers, and producers who shared those values,” writes R.J. Moeller. The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Commentary: Hollywood 2012: What Messages are the Movies Sending Us?…

In this week’s Acton Commentary, “The Mundane Morality of Les Misérables,” I explore the new musical film and in particular a transitional episode where the main protagonist, Jean Valjean, is faced with a moral dilemma: “If I speak, I am condemned. If I stay silent, I am damned!”

Here’s a performance of the scene from the musical’s 10th anniversary, featuring Colm Wilkinson as Valjean:

Read more on Valjean, Lord Acton, and the Common Moral Code…

New York Post illustration

In the New York Post, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at “the spread throughout America of economic expectations and arrangements directly at odds with our republic’s founding” and asks what the slow walk to “Europeanization” means for the long term. Gregg:

Unfortunately there’s a great deal of evidence suggesting America is slouching down the path to Western Europe. In practical terms, that means social-democratic economic policies: the same policies that have turned many Western European nations into a byword for persistently high unemployment, rigid labor markets, low-to-zero economic growth, out-of-control debt and welfare states, absurdly high tax levels, growing numbers of well-paid government workers, a near-obsession with economic equality at any cost and, above all, a stubborn refusal to accept that things simply can’t go on like this.

It’s very hard to deny similar trends are becoming part of America’s economic landscape. States like California are already there — just ask the thousands of Californians and businesses who have fled the land of Nancy Pelosi.

Europeanization is also reflected in the refusal of so many Americans to take our nation’s debt crisis seriously. Likewise, virtually every index of economic freedom and competitiveness shows that, like most Western European nations, America’s position vis-à-vis other countries is in decline.

Is there a way out, even as the “fiscal cliff” negotiations vividly illustrate the inability of Washington’s political elites to take spending and tax problems seriously? Gregg holds out hope: Read more on Samuel Gregg: United States succumbing to ‘Eurosclerosis?’…

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As 2012 comes to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the superb commentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year.

Read more on The Year in Commentary: Various…

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As 2012 comes to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the superb commentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year.

The following list includes articles published in 2012 by Ray Nothstine, an associate editor at Acton and managing editor of Religion & Liberty:
Read more on The Year in Commentary: Ray Nothstine…

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As 2012 comes to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the superb commentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year.

The following list includes articles published in 2012 by Dr. Anthony B. Bradley, a research fellow at the Acton Institute.:
Read more on The Year in Commentary: Anthony B. Bradley…

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As 2012 comes to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the superb commentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year.

The following list includes articles published in 2012 by Dr. Jordan J. Ballor, Acton research fellow and executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality:
Read more on The Year in Commentary: Jordan J. Ballor…

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As 2012 comes to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the superb commentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year.

The following list includes articles published in 2012 by Dr. Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute:
Read more on The Year in Commentary: Samuel Gregg…

Every Wednesday we publish the Acton Commentary, a weekly article that covers topics related to Acton’s mission. As 2012 comes to a close I thought it would be worth highlighting the superb commentaries that have been produced by Acton Institute staffers over the past year.

The following list includes articles published in 2012 by Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute:
Read more on The Year in Commentary: Rev. Robert A. Sirico…

In this day after Christmas edition of Acton Commentary, I take a look at the message the Christ child brings to us, particularly in terms of promoting a culture of birth. In “The Hopes and Fears of All the Years,” I note that “Where evil leaves us speechless, God speaks the Word of hope and salvation.”

The Italian greeting Buon Natale captures this a bit better than the English, “Merry Christmas.”

It struck me that this Christmas season, especially given all of the violent tragedies we’ve seen in America over recent weeks, was a wonderfully appropriate time to reflect on the hope of this birth for our world. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck writes evocatively that “the holy family is the example of the Christian home.”

Very often the “culture of life” and the “culture of death” are juxtaposed, but I want to point to particular aspect of that juxtaposition. Life and death are in some sense not precisely coordinate; if by death we mean the point of departure from this world (and in the traditional Christian understanding) the separation of the soul and the body, then the time of birth and death are in some sense more precisely related.

It’s no secret that the developed world in general, and more recently the United States in particular, faces some serious demographic challenges. Much of this has to do with the absence of a culture of life in general, and a culture of birth in particular. The causes are indeed complex; but in a profound way they are spiritual rather than merely economic or political.
Read more on The Christ Child and a Culture of Birth…