On October 21st at Acton’s 20th Anniversary Dinner, Richard M. DeVos – Co-Founder of Amway Corporation with his friend Jay Van Andel – was presented with the 2010 Faith and Freedom Award.  Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, cited DeVos for his “decades-long exemplary leadership in business, his dedication to the promotion of liberty, his courage in maintaining and defending the free and virtuous society, and his conviction that the roots of liberty and the morally-charged life are to be found in the eternal truths of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Read more on Video: More Highlights from the Acton Institute’s 20th Anniversary Celebration…

Over the last 20 years, Acton Institute has worked to discover, cultivate, and encourage current and future business leaders and cultural influencers. Last week’s 20th Anniversary Dinner gave testimony to two decades of great effort. It is often easy to recognize current leaders like Kate O’Beirne (MC for the evening) and Richard M. DeVos (recipient of the 2010 Faith and Freedom award) but the future leaders are often less obvious to the untrained eye.

Read more on Acton Alumni: Changing the World…

David Bahnsen, writing on The Bahnsen Viewpoint, has a great report on last night’s Acton dinner:

“Good news – the President has announced a reduction of the government work force by one million people (20%). Bad news – the cuts were ordered by President Raul Castro in Cuba.”

Read more on A Report from Acton’s 20th Annual Dinner…

The Universidad Francisco Marroquín is webcasting a celebration of the life of Manuel “Muso” Ayau, its founder, live on Sunday, Sept. 12, at 1 p.m. local time. Watch the event here. The University also has published a special web page dedicated to the legacy of Ayau, with videos and other resources.

Read more on Live: A Celebration of the Life of Manuel Ayau…

In the wake of the global financial crisis, stories from the pundit class and blogosphere abound proclaiming the imminent death of the conservative movement. This is part of a longer and broader discussion with roots in the post-Reagan era of American politics. (As you’ll see in my comments below, I’m not so inclined to think that a move toward particular kinds of populism is necessarily a move away from conservatism.)

Read more on The Death of ‘Conservatism’…

Randy Barnett, a Georgetown University law professor, discusses libertarian attitudes toward war in this OpinionJournal piece (HT: No Left Turns):

While all libertarians accept the principle of self-defense, and most accept the role of the U.S. government in defending U.S. territory, libertarian first principles of individual rights and the rule of law tell us little about what constitutes appropriate and effective self-defense after an attack. Devising a military defense strategy is a matter of judgment or prudence about which reasonable libertarians may differ greatly.

Barnett notes that “The point of this essay is not to debate the merits of the Iraq war but to inform those who may be unaware that libertarians can come down on either side of this issue.”

Read more on Libertarians and War…

During a conference I attended last year, I got into some conversation with young libertarians about the nature of moral duties. In at least two instances, I asserted that positive moral duties exist.

Read more on Moral Duties and Positive Rights…

Our religious and political rights are uniquely bound up together. Most young Americans, and far too many older native born American citizens, have little or no idea how important this truth really is.

The central idea behind this unique relationship in American political understanding is limited government. This is really what classical liberalism understood and fervently practiced. Modern liberalism has little or nothing to do with this understanding, preferring to stress ideologies that are neither truly liberal nor limited.

The founding fathers fervently believed that we were all created equal, with inherent rights to life and liberty given to us by God. This belief was rooted in both Judeo-Christian beliefs and some elements of Enlightenment philosophy. The securing of these rights was the very basis for a limited government. And a limited government was based upon the understanding that true power arose from the governed who were willing to consent to a just government.

There were some very big differences of opinion among our founding fathers, such as two very different views of America’s future as represented by Jefferson and Hamilton. In some ways these two distinct views clashed in the Civil War, as North and South came to represent these two differing positions. But regardless of these early differences what clearly united the founders was a deep respect for individual rights and for limited government. Read more on The Role of Limited Government…

Via Drudge, the Weather Channel "Climate Expert" is taking serious flack (check the comments) for her call to pull the credentials of any media meteorologist who doesn’t endorse the theory of human-caused global warming. The cover provided by her boss doesn’t garner any more favorable feedback.

Read more on Faith-Based Weather Broadcasting…

One of the more lively and illuminating discussions at last week’s Advanced Studies in Freedom seminar revolved around the question whether and how classical liberalism is applicable to foreign policy, specifically with regard to questions of war. In the New York Times earlier this week, Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote a lengthy op-ed that bears on the relevant questions, “An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With.”

Read more on Classical Liberalism, Foreign Policy, and Just War…