Samuel Gregg: Freedom in a Post-Euro Europe

Acton’s director of research Samuel Gregg is up at Public Discourse, with a piece titled “Monetary Possibilities for a Post-Euro Europe.” With his usual mix of sophisticated economic analysis and reference to deep principles, Gregg considers European countries’ options should the eurozone fail. Continue Reading...

Is Making Money Evil, Harry Reid?

I was listening to news radio and heard an update in which the senate majority leader Harry Reid gave his interpretation of events on the debt ceiling negotiation. The part that really got my attention was where he insisted that further committee work would go after those “millionaires and billionaires.” Continue Reading...

Books for the Arsenal of Ordered Liberty

As we begin the New Year, I find myself thinking about books that fill the conservative armamentarium for resisting the left-liberal onslaught on the past handful of years. I’ve omitted some categories, like military and foreign policy, because they are outside my areas of expertise and don’t apply as much to the Acton mission, anyway. Continue Reading...

Wealth and Fidelity, Golf and Marriage

Amidst all the craziness of l’affaire d’Tigre there are some important questions being raised about the linkage between power, wealth, and faithfulness. The Wealth Report at The Wall Street Journal asks, “Is it harder to stay faithful with large wealth?” Continue Reading...

Socialism Flu Shots for Christmas

Got the socialism blues? Worried that a friend or maybe a teenage son or daughter may contract a nasty case of it? Marvin Olasky at World magazine recommends former Acton research fellow Jay Richards’ 2009 HarperOne book, Money Greed and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and not the Problem: Among the myths Richards demolishes: The Nirvana Myth (contrasting capitalism with an unrealizable ideal rather than with its real alternatives), the Piety Myth (focusing on good intentions rather than results), and the Materialist and Zero-Sum Game Myths (believing that wealth is not created but simply transferred). Continue Reading...

Sacred Selling

I have been thinking a lot about the way we sell church-related goods and services. I have been thinking about that and about Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers and sacrificial animal sellers in the temple. Continue Reading...

PBR: Glory and Money

Sports are still able to foster human virtues, especially classical virtues like courage and fortitude. Like any good thing, sport all too often risks becoming an idol, not because of any fault within the institution itself so much as the fault lying within each human participant. Continue Reading...

Jesus and the Parables

By happy serendipity two books of related interest caught my attention today. The first is David Cowan’s Economic Parables: The Monetary Teachings of Jesus Christ (Paternoster, 2007). Michael Kruse recommends the book in a brief review. Continue Reading...