Rev. Robert Sirico appeared on the February 8 edition of “The Blaze” to discuss the revisions to the HHS mandate announced by the White House on January 20.
The following video features a brief part of Rev. Sirico’s contribution to the show. You may see the entire piece by going to The Blaze TV website and signing up for a free 14-day trial.
Read more on Rev. Sirico on ‘The Blaze’: Catholic Bishops Reject New HHS Concessions…
Theodore Dalrymple, contributing editor of the City Journal and Dietrich Weissman Fellow of the Manhattan Institute, has recently reviewed Samuel Gregg’s new book, Becoming Europe at the Library of Law and Liberty.
Read more on Review: Theodore Dalrymple on ‘Becoming Europe’…
Justice Antonin Scalia caused quite the stir by attending President Obama’s inauguration ceremony wearing a custom-made replica of the painter’s hat depicted in a famous portrait of St. Thomas More, the well-known Catholic statesman and martyr.
Whether Scalia intended it or not, observers quickly translated the act as a quiet game of connect-the-dots between the administration’s punitive HHS mandate and Henry VIII’s executioner, leading conservatives to applaud while progressives don their own less fashionable bonnets of protest.
Although I don’t expect actual heads to roll anytime soon, the symbolism is fitting indeed. This an administration that seeks to lure Christians away from their consciences through threats of economic penalties and pain. If your religious beliefs happen to clash with the coercive methods and materialistic aims of this administration, blood shall be spilt on the altar of “access.”
The irony abounds. Keep in mind that President Obama ran a campaign that ridiculed Mitt Romney as an Ebenezer Scrooge who clings to his coins without empathy for others and without regard for ethics and morality (all despite Romney’s strong record of charitable giving, might I add). Then and now, this same President seeks to persecute good people like Hobby Lobby’s CEO through economic penalties in the millions of dollars, all for the abonimable sin of caring about and believing in something before and beyond the dollar.
If the great secret of capitalism is its power to leverage and channel the human spirit toward more transcendent ends, the great irony of progressivism is its propensity to take on the image of its own materialistic critiques. Read more on Economic Martyrdom and the Great Irony of Progressivism…
The Acton Institute has again been named a leading think tank by the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program. Writing about this new, 2012 ranking, Alejandro Chafuen, explained what constitutes a good think tank on the Forbes website:
A “market-oriented” think tank is grounded on the reality that respect for private property within a context of rule of law with limited government has been the path for the wealth of nations. Think tanks that are not market-oriented study how to redistribute wealth, how to increase taxation, or the optimum rate of monetary debasement. Governments have typically relied on their own internal think tanks for that research, and complemented it by research from state-subsidized universities. Market-oriented think tanks focus on finding private solutions to public problems.
Chafuen is president and chief executive officer of Atlas Economic Research Foundation and board member of the Acton Institute. You can read his full article, “Thinking About Think Tanks: Which Ones Are the Best?” at Forbes.com.
The full news release from the Acton Institute follows:
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Jan. 24, 2013)—The University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program ranked the Acton Institute among the top social policy and top U.S. think tanks with the release of its 2012 Global Go-To Think Tanks Report. In addition, Acton was cited for having one of the best advocacy campaigns.
Read more on Acton Institute Ranked Among Top Global Think Tanks…
In the Washington Times, Nile Gardiner praises Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future, the new book by Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg. Gardiner, the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation and a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst for The Telegraph, says Becoming Europe “should be on the desk of every member of the House and Senate who cares about the future of America as a prosperous and free nation.” Gardiner recommends the book for its “rich detail describing the economic and social ‘Europeanization’ of America, from the rise of vast welfare systems to growing skepticism of the merits of the free-enterprise system.” Excerpt from the review:
National Review Online asked Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg to weigh in on President Barack Obama’s second term inaugural address.
Gregg points to “our president’s worldview that the government is the primary way in which we address our common problems and realize our responsibilities and obligations to each other as citizens and as human beings.” He wonders if it has occurred to Obama that “many such responsibilities and obligations might be realized outside the realm of politics … ”
Read more on Samuel Gregg: Please put Tocqueville, Maritain on reading list, Mr. President…
In response to the Hobby Lobby lawsuit, Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life and pastor of Saddleback Church, has released a statement at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty:
Read more on Rick Warren on Hobby Lobby Lawsuit: ‘Every Business is Either Moral or Immoral’…
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:
Visiting San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in 1968, Tom Wolfe was struck by the way hippies there “sought nothing less than to sweep aside all codes and restraints of the past and start out from zero.” In his essay “The Great Relearning,” Wolfe connects this to Ken Kesey’s pilgrimage to Stonehenge, inspired by “the idea of returning to civilization’s point zero” and trying to start all over from scratch and do it better. Wolfe predicted that history will record that Haight-Ashbury period as “one of the most extraordinary religious experiments of all time.”
Is spartan austerity driving us over the fiscal cliff?
The latest step in the budget dance between House Republicans and the White House has to do with where tax increases (or revenue increases in general, depending on what is called what) fit with a deal to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff.” As Napp Nazworth reports, President Obama has apparently delivered an ultimatum: “there would be no agreement to avert the ‘fiscal cliff’ unless tax rates are increased on those making more than $250,000 per year.”
On one level it seems reasonable to talk about addressing a deficit from both directions: cutting spending and raising revenue. But as Ray Nothstine put it so well earlier this week, without some structural (and cultural) changes to the way Congress works, it would be insane to think that giving politicians more money is going to change how they spend it. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Historically “politicians spend the money as fast as it comes in – and a little bit more.” Without some kind of balanced budget agreement, something with real teeth, why should we think things will be any different this time around? (I’ve talked about a more promising “both/and” budget solution before.) As Ray and I have concluded elsewhere, “In the case of the federal spending, the government has proved to be untrustworthy with very much. It’s time to see if the politicians in Washington can learn to be trustworthy with less.”
Read more on Spartan Austerity and the Fiscal Cliff…
