I can always find common ground with the Distributists I meet. We want to replace the government-corporate cronyism that characterizes so much of our current economic system. And we want our culture to raise up young people with the skills, virtues and freedom to accumulate productive capital and invest it in ways that promote human flourishing for themselves and others.

Read more on Belloc, Distributism and Political Power…

There are no more Christian churches in Afghanistan — not a single public house of Christian worship is left standing. In other news, NATO success against the Taliban may have been intentionally exaggerated, although we already knew that progress in that country is… slow. It’s no surprise, of course, that the United States hasn’t been able to establish self government-in-a-box in a country where, according to the State Department, religious liberty has declined measurably even in the last year.

Read more on Freedom in a Land without Churches?…

Mitt Romney’s faith made headlines again at the Values Voters Summit in D.C., where Robert Jeffress, who is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, proclaimed last week, “Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person, or one who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?”

Read more on Mitt Romney, the Mormon Question, and Presidential Elections…

Acton director of research Samuel Gregg offers his thoughts on last night’s GOP Roundtable in this NRO Symposium. Gregg thinks the debate offered an important alternative to the government-driven economy talk that fills the news every other night of the week.

Read more on Samuel Gregg on the GOP Roundtable…

This past Sunday one of the songs in our worship service was the hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”

Here’s the first stanza:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

If the new translation of Abraham Kuyper, Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, were to have a companion hymn, this might well be the perfect candidate.

Read more on ‘All things wise and wonderful…’…

The presence of one group at the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests might be surprising: the Distributist Review has produced this flyer for distribution at the protests.  They don’t seem to have asked themselves whether G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc would have gone down to protest with the unwashed masses (the answer, of course, is never in a million years) but contemporary “neodistributists” are a more inclusive set. They go far beyond the metaphysical and aesthetic principles of Chesterton and Belloc’s economics. Since that flyer’s a little hard to read, we’ve put together a list to help you identify your inner distributist: herewith, Ten Signs You May Be a Distributist:

Read more on 10 Signs You May Be a Distributist…

“They were trying to blow me into heaven, but God wanted me on Earth.” – Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth’s courage, tenacity, and epic struggle for racial equality in the city of Birmingham, Alabama, is legendary. Birmingham, not so affectionately nicknamed “Bombingham” in the 1950s and 1960s for its propensity for racial acts of terror, named its airport after the famed American Civil Rights leader in 2008.

Read more on Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: Courage in Christ (1922 – 2011)…

Acton has been heavily involved in developing a new initiative called PovertyCure, an international network that promotes entrepreneurial solutions to poverty rooted in the dignity of the human person.

We are excited to announce the launch of PovertyCure this week. Acton has joined together with over 100 organizations to encourage people to rethink charity and development.

Read more on VIDEO: PovertyCure Launch…

My sister has a small pillow in her bedroom that’s embroidered with the words “She who dies with the most shoes wins.” I’m sure Lloyd Blankfein’s daughter has one just like it. And you’d think that the patchouli-scented Occupy Wall Street crowd might not like such a pillow, but you’d be wrong, as Ray Nothstine pointed out in this week’s Acton Commentary. The anger at Zuccotti Park isn’t sparked by greed on Wall Street, it’s sparked by greed in Zuccotti Park.

Read more on Unions Go Shoe Shopping…

I was fortunate to attend some of “Reagan: A Centenary Retrospective” at Hillsdale College from October 2 – 5. I was present for excellent lectures by Craig Shirley and Peter Robinson.

Read more on Ronald Reagan Retrospective at Hillsdale College…