National Review Online invited Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg to contribute to a roundup of opinion on the inauguration of a second term in office for President Barack Obama. Gregg, the author of the just-published Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future, was also featured yesterday on Ed Driscoll’s blog on Pajamas Media. Driscoll linked his New York Post column on “eurosclerois.

Here’s Gregg’s contribution to NRO’s “Inauguration Day Survival Guide”:

Read more on Samuel Gregg: ‘Political Detroitification and economic Europeanization’…

Ray Nothstine, managing editor of Religion & Liberty, was recently on Relevant Radio with Drew Mariani to discuss the issue of gun control.  According to the Chicago Tribune:

President Barack Obama unveiled a sweeping plan to reduce gun violence…that would require criminal background checks for all gun sales and a ban on military-style assault weapons. Obama also proposed an end to high-capacity ammunition clips, instead limiting clips to 10 rounds, according to details of the plan released by the White House. He would also toughen laws aimed at reducing gun trafficking.

Nothstine and Mariani discuss the recent executive actions regarding gun control and the reasonableness of restrictions. During the interview the dangers of increasing government authority arises and Nothstine asks, “how much can we really trust a government that doesn’t trust us in our own capacity for self government?” He addresses this point more fully in a recent blogpost:

Read more on Audio: Ray Nothstine on Gun Control…

Jordan Ballor looks at the bipartisan lack of discipline in Washington on debt and spending, and the effect on future generations. “Christians, whose citizenship is ultimately not of this world and whose identity and perspective must likewise be eternal and transcendent, should not let our viewpoints be determined by the tyranny of the short-term,” he writes. “If we continue the current course of American politics, the fiscal cliff will end up being nothing more than a bump in the road toward the cultural, economic and political bankrupting of America.” The full text of his essay follows. The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.

Read more on Commentary: Living in the Shadow of the Fiscal Cliff…

On Nov. 19, Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico discussed a recent federal court ruling on the Obama Administration’s HHS Contraception Mandate on TheBlaze.com’s Real News.

For more on this story, see the Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius resource page on the website of Alliance Defending Freedom.

Read more on Video: Rev. Sirico Responds to Court Ruling on Tyndale House and Obamacare…

Writing on The Corner over at National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg points to the election and, refreshingly, tells us that, “I’m not one of those who, in recent days, have seemed inclined to indulge their inner curmudgeon, apparently convinced that it’s more or less game-over for America and we’re doomed to Euro-serfdom.”

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Are We All Europeans Now?…

I recently talked to one of Italy’s leading classical liberal scholars, Prof. Nicola Iannello, regarding the outcome of this week’s U.S. presidential elections.  

Prof. Iannello, a devotee of classical liberalism and Alexis de Tocqueville, is an Italian journalist, international lecturer with Istituto Bruno Leoni, and chair of the Einaudi Foundation’s Austrian School of Economics course for Roman university students. Prof. Iannello has published several widely read academic articles on Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and Frédéric Bastiat, among other pro-liberty European intellectuals.

Read more on Going ‘Forward’ or ‘Backward’? Interview with Prof. Nicola Iannello about U.S. Elections…

Mitt Romney may have lost to Barack Obama but his was not the biggest loss of the election—at least not economically. Despite the millions the GOP spent to elect their candidate, the real economic losers of the 2012 election, as Joel Kotkin explains, are entrepreneurs:

Read more on The Election’s Biggest Losers…

Writing for National Review Online, Rev. Robert A. Sirico offers three salient points about last night’s election:

1. Americans give signs of moving in a morally and politically more progressive direction, by which I mean that the appeal to the wisdom of past ages and tradition is simply not as compelling as it once was. People today, not all, but many, seem to want the trappings of the tradition (the white gown at the wedding), but not its obligations (chastity before it), thus indicating they would rather live off the legacy of the past than work to create a new and enduring legacy for the future.

Read more on Rev. Sirico: One Election Cannot Fix What Ails Us…

It is clear that what President Barack Obama has achieved is historic: Being re-elected when not a single one of his major initiatives has enjoyed broad popular support.

What is also clear is that the moral and spiritual demographics of the United States have changed considerably.  If Gov. Mitt Romney, an honorable man of moderate political preferences and conservative personal convictions, cannot attract a winning coalition we are in deep trouble.  His loss illustrates the change that has occurred in the nation and the challenges it portends.  Politics is about addition and Gov. Romney surely tried to run an “additional” campaign and I can think of no Republican who was more likely to accomplish what was necessary for a center-right victory.

Last night’s election illustrates that Americans have become a people more dependent on the government. The country will continue to trend culturally and politically to the left. This means that conservative causes that take their impetus from the truths and moral rationality offered by the Judeo-Christian political  and philosophical tradition will continue to be marginalized, the Church’s liberty restricted, and the cultural, moral, political and spiritual leftism, hedonism,  and materialism, with its attendant anomie and nihilism, will continue the long march through all of our cultural and governmental institutions. Read more on What Happened…

Quoting former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Mitt Romney was right to make the point that the federal deficit is the biggest national security threat to our country. Romney has also been critical of President Obama for failing to resolve significant cuts to defense spending under the Budget Control Act. Both political parties agree these cuts would be a disaster and they were implemented primarily as a motivational mechanism for real budget reform.

Read more on Presidential Debate, Defense Spending, and Military Readiness…