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’…

It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire. The Brits colonized vast areas of the earth, civilizing exotic places  with the likes of afternoon tea and cricket. Oh, and happily using up natural resources along the way.

Read more on The New Colonialism: Renting Wombs…

In a post about the “Nuns on the bus” tour, National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez reminds us that “at a time when the very ability of church organizations to freely live their mission of service has been compromised by federal mandates, it is especially important to debate the role of government with clarity and charity.” In her essay, she brings in the the PovertyCure project and Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s new book, Defending the Free Market: A Moral Case for the Free Economy.

Read more on ‘Truth Gives Freedom Its Direction’…

Five years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI delivered a talk titled “Faith, Reason and the University” at the University of Regensburg in Germany. The lecture set off a firestorm of controversy concerning Christian-Muslim relations. On National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg reflects, noting that calling it “one of this century’s pivotal speeches is probably an understatement.”

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Looking Back on Benedict’s Regensburg Speech…

Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade the United States’ credit rating has everyone talking. Discussion has ranged from we shouldn’t take Standard and Poor’s decision seriously at all to this could be the beginning of the end for the United States if it doesn’t make immediate changes. In a roundup published by National Review Online, Samuel Gregg weighs in on how the credit downgrade should be understood:

Read more on Gregg: Down on the Downgrade?…

Rev. Sirico was interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online on the national debt of the United States, the debt ceiling, and the moral issues of the budget debate. Their discussion spanned from how a prudent, discerning legislator should look at the debt-ceiling debate to the mind set needed when considering spending cuts:

Read more on Rev Sirico: Budget, Debt, and Morality…

In a recent article in World magazine, Acton senior fellow Marvin Olasky urged evangelical minister Jim Wallis to drop the pretense of being post-partisan. Olasky, World magazine’s editor-in-chief, went on to assert that (1) Wallis’s organization, Sojourners, received money from the foundation of secular-leftist George Soros, and that (2) Wallis had lent the Sojourners mailing list to the Obama campaign.

Read more on A Paper Trail from Soros to Wallis?…

“We talk about what caused the financial crisis, whether ‘greed is good,’ and if ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ It’s John J. Miller describing his podcast interview with Jay Richards here at NRO. They discuss Jay’s excellent new book, Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and not the Problem.

Read more on Money, Greed and God at NRO…

Frank J. Hanna III, Georgia CEO of Hanna Capital and cofounder of the Solidarity Foundation, is author of the new book What Your Money Means (and How to Use It Well). Hanna, a board member of the Acton Institute, talked to National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez in a Q&A titled “Virtue and Volatility” about earning money, using it well, the market meltdown, and more.

Read more on Hanna on NRO: Virtue and Volatility…