Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico took to the airwaves on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes this morning, joining host Frank Beckmann on News/Talk 760 WJR in Detroit to talk about an event he will be speaking at in the Motor City next week, and also shedding some light on the current state of affairs in China, where he is currently traveling; audio of the segment is available via the audio player below.Read more on Acton Media Alert: Rev. Robert A. Sirico Reports From China…
Acton’s The Birth of Freedom comes to six PBS stations this Independence Day weekend, and AEI’s Enterprise blog has a good post about the Christian foundations of American freedom and The Birth of Freedom: “It’s a good place to start if you’re interested in recalling, learning, or helping others to learn about the deep roots of the freedom we celebrate every Fourth of July. Those roots define, in part, what it means to be an American citizen.”
Read more on The Birth of Freedom Comes to PBS for Independence Day…
We’ve posted a dozen or so AU 2010 lectures in our online store and expect to be putting up many more in the days ahead. They’re priced at $1.99 and transactions are through a secure server at the Acton Institute Digital Downloads page. Check back often. Here’s what available now:
Acton Media’s second documentary makes its public television debut Sunday, May 2, with a 3-4 p.m. airing on Detroit Public Television (HD channel 56.1). The film trailer is here.
Update: Michigan PBS stations WCMU and WFUM have scheduled the documentary for broadcast on Thursday, June 17, from 10-11 p.m.
Read more on The Birth of Freedom Documentary Airs Sunday on Detroit Public TV…
Saturday February 27 was the second anniversary of the death of the conservative giant William F. Buckley, Jr. I first saw Buckley in person when Ole Miss hosted Firing Line in 1997. I read National Review in High School even though I admit I did not always understand some of his words at that age. It was a wonderful reminder of the importance of intellectualism and conservatism, and that I still had a lot to learn. The political left too had to respect Buckley’s brand of conservatism because of the seriousness of those ideas. It didn’t hurt that he was charming, gracious, and extremely generous.
The Birth of Freedom opens and closes with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. King appealed to Americans to live out the true meaning of this nation’s creed that all men are created equal. The documentary sets that appeal within the broader context of the Christian West’s slow but ultimately triumphant march to freedom.
Read more on Celebrate Martin Luther King Day With The Birth of Freedom Film…
My Acton commentary this week looks at As We Forgive, a moving documentary about reconciliation and forgiveness in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. As I reflected on forgiveness in my own life, my thoughts fell on a dear friend who died very young and my feelings towards the man who took his life.
The full commentary follows:
Two and a half years ago I lost my good friend, Tim. He had just reenlisted for his second term in the Army after having already served once in Iraq. On a late summer evening, while stationed on his base in Washington, a fight broke out. Tim tried to break it up and was stabbed in the neck by a fellow solider. He died shortly afterward at the hospital. Tim was 22. I haven’t ever thought much about the young man who took his life. And if I had the opportunity to meet him, I can’t think of any reason that I would. Tim’s killer is locked behind bars for the rest of his life, and for all intents and purposes justice has been served. For me it’s easier to forget that he still lives while my friend is dead.
For many in the small African country of Rwanda, however, it’s not easy to forget about death. Just over a year ago, I traveled with the Acton Institute to Rwanda in preparation for a new project on poverty. Although we were there primarily talking to entrepreneurs about wealth and poverty, it was impossible not to have questions about the 1994 genocide. In less than 100 days, nearly one million people were murdered and tens of thousands were responsible for these deaths. Flying into the country with that knowledge, a mere 14 years later, I didn’t know what to expect. I was anxious and unsettled, the same sort of tension that I felt while visiting Tim’s body at the funeral home. The weight of death stood in stark contrast to such a vibrant culture. Read more on As We Forgive, Can I Forgive?…
Got the socialism blues? Worried that a friend or maybe a teenage son or daughter may contract a nasty case of it? Marvin Olasky at World magazine recommends former Acton research fellow Jay Richards’ 2009 HarperOne book, Money Greed and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and not the Problem:
In a new essay at The American, Jay Richards explains why capitalism isn’t based on greed.
In Acton’s first documentary, The Call of the Entrepreneur, Richards along Rev. Robert Sirico, Sam Gregg, Michael Novak and others touch on this matter in making the moral case for the free economy.
“The Deal Professor,” Steven M. Davidoff, has a good piece at The New York Times website about the indispensability of finance to our economy. It briefly rebuts the view popularized in the Oliver Stone movie Wall Street, in which financiers are portrayed as greedy parasites. I left a comment at the web page, noting that our documentary The Call of the Entrepreneur makes a similar case. I include the comment below, since it may not pass muster with the page’s comment moderator:
Read more on The Inevitability of Finance And The Call of the Entrepreneur…
