Both the original and compromise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren.

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Michael Gerson on what the Obama administration’s view of religious liberty shares with John Locke:

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“The past year has marked a shift in religious liberty debates,” notes Sarah Pulliam Bailey at Christianity Today, “one that previously centered on hiring rights but became focused on health care requirements.” Bailey put together a helpful timeline that shows a number of actions the government took in the past year, setting precedents and priorities on various issues affecting religious freedom.

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Would dissolving the European common currency, as proposed by the French free-market economist and entrepreneur Charles Gave in his book Libéral mais non coupable (“Liberal But Not Guilty”) free the Old Continent to stand upright on its financial feet again? Or would dissolving the currency drastically end the European project altogether, as some pro-Euro technocrats in Brussels fear?

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There are only a few days left to register for the AU Online session, Private Charity: A Practitioner’s View! This online session will take place on March 27 and feature highly-rated Acton lecturer and current U.S. Regional Facilitator for Partners Worldwide, Rudy Carrasco. In a lecture that blends the theoretical with real-life encounters and stories, Rudy shows how using local knowledge and resources unavailable and unsuited to public agencies is vital for effective charity.

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The Reformation doctrine of vocation teaches that even seemingly secular jobs and earthly relationships are spheres where God assigns Christians to live out their faith, notes Gene Veith. But are there some lines of work that Christians should avoid?

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In The American Spectator, Acton Institute’s Michael Matheson Miller throws his hat into the ring as he launches a tongue-in-cheek candidacy for World Bank president, but also raises serious questions about the institution’s poverty fighting programs. Miller is a research fellow at Acton, where he directs PovertyCure, an initiative that promotes enterprise solutions to poverty. Jeffrey Sachs — are you listening?

Read more on Miller: Here I Come to Save the World Bank…

I saw the fine film Act of Valor last month, and I was struck by the level of sacrifice displayed in the lives of the service members featured. I have wondered in the meantime whether the scale of the sacrifice that’s been required of American service persons over the last two decades is sustainable.

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With the concept of religious liberty being treated as an antiquated and obsolete notion, it’s refreshing to be reminded of the great, but oft-forgotten, Founding Father John Witherspoon. As John Willson writes, Witherspoon—who was a signer of the Declaration, member of Congress, and President of Princeton—had a profound understanding of how the government should relate to religion:
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Why do people so readily assume the worst about the religious motives of their fellow citizens? Why do we let partisanship take precedence over implementing policy solutions? In his new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and attempts to show the way forward to mutual understanding. In his review of Haidt’s book, Anthony Bradley writes in this week’s Acton Commentary (published Mar. 21) that,”In one sense Haidt is not saying anything that religious leaders and economists haven’t been saying for centuries, namely, that at the root of our understanding of politics are fundamental beliefs about human nature and definitions of morality. In recent decades, Americans have increasingly turned to psychologists as experts on morality and human action.” The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Commentary: Human Nature: The Question behind the Culture Wars…