This is, as millions already know, Super Bowl week. Nothing is hyped all across America quite like the Super Bowl. This game has reached amazing proportions when it comes to the viewing audience and massive commercialization. It is a stunning piece of popular culture and one doesn’t know whether to weep about it or celebrate. Some pietistic folk see this as clear evidence that there is little real difference between us and the ancient Romans in the Coliseum. Others think this is the greatest day of the whole year with the biggest event of all time at 5 p.m. Everything, so it seems, virtually comes to a halt for the Super Bowl.

Read more on The Super Bowl and Christian Freedom…

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I review Will Smith’s latest movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, which stands as an extended argument underscoring the truth of conservative values. This may sound like an improbable anomaly given the traditional political, ethical, and social allegiances of Hollywood, but the power of the story lies in its basis in fact, the real-life story of Christopher Gardner. This in turn prevents it from being appropriated as a tool for liberal political ideology.

Read more on Material Goods and The Pursuit of Happyness…

Received an announcement today about this event to be held later this week, “Faith and International Development Conference,” at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., from February 1-3.

Check out the list of sponsors at the bottom of the page, including:

Read more on Faith and International Development at Calvin College…

“ICANN Reviews Revoking Outdated Suffixes” (HT: Slashdot).

From the piece, “The Soviet Union’s ‘.su’ is the leading candidate for deletion.” A Google search turns up about 3 million sites with the .su suffix.

Read more on So .su me…

Several months ago I was invited to serve on the board of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). Frankly, I was stunned by this invitation. I will attend my first meeting in Washington, DC, in a few months. IRD’s purpose statement says that it is: (1) An ecumenical alliance of U. S. Christians, (2) working to reform their churches’ social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, (3) thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad. IRD board member Michael Novak has written that Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s that “the first political institution of American democracy is religion” (which of course meant the Christian religion at that time). Novak speaks, in a statement such as this, of the bedrock vision of IRD. I deeply share this vision thus my desire to work with and serve alongside the staff of IRD in Washington.

Read more on Institute on Religion and Democracy…

The business of philanthropy education, teaching people how to give their money away, is a growth industry, according to Business Week (HT: The Wealth Report).

It seems that wealthy kids often have trouble realizing and meeting their moral duties to be good stewards of their inheritance. “With my inheritance, I felt a sense of guilt and responsibility,” says Jos Thalheimer, 24, whose great-grandfather founded the American Oil Co. (Amoco) in 1910.

Read more on How to do Good Well…

The Journal of Markets & Morality, Volume 9, Number 2.

The newest edition of the Journal of Markets & Morality is now available online and in print. You can pick up a single copy of the print version at the Acton Bookshoppe, or you can subscribe to the Journal.

Read more on Journal of Markets & Morality, Volume 9, Issue 2…

Let’s engage in a little thought experiment. How would you feel about the following scenario?

1) The government bans all activities associated with Industry X because it judges that this industry damages the common good. Industry X is under government prohibition.

Read more on A Government-Enforced Monopoly…

Kim Strasell in OpinionJournal today:

CEOs are quick learners, and even those who would get smacked by a carbon cap are now devising ways to make warming work to their political advantage. The "most creative" prize goes to steel giant Nucor. Steven Rowlan, the company’s environmental director, doesn’t want carbon caps in the U.S.–oh, no. The smarter answer, he explains, would be for the U.S. to impose trade restrictions on foreign firms that aren’t environmentally clean. Global warming as foil for trade protectionism: Chuck Schumer’s dream.

Read more on The Global Warming Trough…

With respect to the extension of political, economic, and religious freedom, East Asia contains some of the more challenging spots on the globe. I’ve commented in the past on Korea and China. It seems safe now to place in the column “making progress” a nation that had been one of the most totalitarian, Vietnam.

Read more on The Long, Slow March of Freedom…