Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'America'

An All-American Asteroid City

During his past decade or so of directing, Wes Anderson has done his darnedest to make audiences forget he’s an American. His most recent films have been set in elaborately imagined fictional versions of Budapest (2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel), Japan (2018’s Isle of Dogs), and France (2021’s The French Dispatch). Continue Reading...

Top Gun: Maverick: Our America Is Back

The surprise hit of 2022 was Top Gun: Maverick, a man and machine heroic picture, sentimental and nostalgic, the sort of thing Hollywood just doesn’t do anymore. At first glance it seemed way too old-fashioned, yet it made more than $700 million in America and just a bit more than that in the rest of the world, without even opening in China. Continue Reading...

The Myths of American Individualism

Americans are an individualistic bunch. Our popular culture makes heroes of outsiders, loners, and disrupters. Our politicians emphasize their independence of entrenched institutions, party discipline, and special interests. In economic affairs, we assume that success is within the grasp of anyone who really tries—and harshly judge those who don’t appear to meet the challenge. Continue Reading...

Does The Godfather believe in America?

This month the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the premiere of The Godfather, an important movie, a movie we at some point got in the habit of calling iconic, and we might remember it made stars of a number of actors, starting with Al Pacino. Continue Reading...

For religion to be national, it must first be personal

What does it mean for a nation to be Christian? Does the United States of America fit the description? At its founding, the United States was undoubtedly a Christian nation. To foster a society of religious freedom and pluralism, the Founding Fathers intentionally did not establish a national religion and took care to separate the domains of church and state in the founding documents of our country. Continue Reading...

Fusionism and Western Civ

Pope Leo XIII, writing in the midst of social crisis at the end of the nineteenth century, wisely observed: “When a society is perishing, the wholesome advice to give to those who would restore it is to call it to the principles from which it sprang.” Continue Reading...