Posts tagged with: Acton annual dinner

P.J. O’Rourke

The event will be taking place from at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, Mich. Previous keynote speakers have included Eric Metaxas and John O’Sullivan. Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of Acton, will also be giving special remarks during the evening.

Individual tickets are $150 and table sponsorships are also available for $3,000 and $5,000. Be sure to register now by visiting www.acton.org/dinner. For more information, please contact Teresa Bailey at tbailey@acton.org or call 616.454.3080. We hope to see you there!

Thursday, October 20, former United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher will be honored with the 2011 Faith & Freedom Award in Grand Rapids. The award will be accepted by former Thatcher adviser John O’Sullivan at Acton’s 21st Annual Dinner. O’Sullivan is currently vice president and executive editor Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Still a close friend of Thatcher, O’Sullivan defined the essence of ‘Thatcherism:’

Thatcherism is a combination of economic liberty, traditional conservative and Christian values, British patriotism, and a strong attachment to the United States and other like-minded countries in the English speaking world. In her intellectual life – her occasional lectures, her reading, her participation in seminars – she has been extremely consistent in her attachment to these ideas.

Religion & Liberty interviewed Thatcher in 1992. For a closer look at her special friendship with President Ronald Reagan, take a look at my review of Nicholas Wapshott’s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage published in 2008.

“The Iron Lady” title was bestowed upon her upon by the Soviet Army newspaper Red Star in 1976 because of her piercing denouncement of communism. Thatcher, who of course loved it, allowed the moniker to stick. Below is a superb video of Thatcher sweeping away the socialist state.

David Bahnsen reflects on last night’s annual dinner:

(Acton’s) co-founder, Father Sirico, is a friend and patriot. He is a scholar in Catholic social thought, and perhaps as good of an orator as I have ever heard. He and I shared the podium at an event I did in Newport Beach earlier in the year. Fortunately for me, I spoke before him that evening! The talk tonight was challenging and inspiring. He reminded us that the greatest victim in this present environment is entrepreneurial courage. We do not have the option to wallow in our pessimism. Defeatism will not protect us from the walls of socialism and redistributionism being built right around us. As Hayek said decades ago, moral courage is needed to tow the line for the cause of freedom and markets. I feel grateful this evening to have an ally in this battle in Father Sirico and the Acton Institute.

The keynote speaker tonight was Arthur Brooks, the President of the American Enterprise Institute. His talk forms the basis for my catchy blog title. He carefully walked us through the overwhelming evidence that it is “earned success” that makes people happy. Society is over-loaded with people who have received money via inheritance or the lottery, and sociological and psychological studies have repeatedly affirmed this rather fascinating tenet: People with money who did not earn it are overwhelmingly more likely to say that they are unhappy than people who earned it. Obviously, regardless of the source of one’s prosperity, happiness can not be bought. As people of faith, we know that the human condition is such that mere material comfort can not bring about resolution in what tries men’s souls. But “earned success” – the stimulation of human dignity that achievement and accomplishment represent – does bring about happiness (at least in a statistically significant way).

Read “The Left Doesn’t Want You to Be Happy.”