Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'progressives'

Video: Donald Devine On America’s Way Back

The Fall 2015 Acton Lecture Series kicked off on September 17 with an address from Donald Devine, Senior Scholar at the Fund for American Studies, and formerly – and most famously – Ronald Reagan’s Director of the Office of Personnel Management, where he earned the nickname “Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword of the Bureaucracy” from the Washington Post. Continue Reading...

‘A Vision of the Impossible’: Taft on Progressives and Panaceas

In a wide-ranging discussion of the Progressive Era in her new biography of Calvin Coolidge, Amity Shlaes quotes a striking excerpt from a little-known speech by President William Howard Taft. Given in the middle of the 1912 election, in which Taft competed (poorly) against Woodrow Wilson and former President Teddy Roosevelt, the speech focuses on the predominant themes and schemes of his opponents, handily highlighting their limits. Continue Reading...

As You Sow’s Grim Reaping

Religious groups seeking to serve myriad liberal agendas during the 2013 shareholder proxy resolution season look no further than As You Sow, a group dedicated to “large-scale systemic change by establishing sustainable and equitable corporate practices.” Continue Reading...

Rev. Sirico: One Election Cannot Fix What Ails Us

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. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg: Hell, Heaven, and Progressive Catholics

Recently, progressive Catholics met in Detroit and issued calls for a married clergy and the ordination of women priests. In a very timely article Samuel Gregg, research director at the Acton Institute, addresses the progressive Catholics who “sit rather loosely with Catholic teaching on questions like life and marriage” and how they are continuing “to press what is often a hyper-politicized understanding of the gospel.” Continue Reading...

Acton Lecture Series: Alinsky for Dummies

We’re posting the audio from Mr. Joseph Morris’ excellent May 6 Acton Lecture Series presentation, Alinsky for Dummies: His Persistent Influence and Its Meaning for American Society and Politics. As Lord Acton warned that power corrupts, Saul Alinsky — the father of modern “community organizing” — rejoiced that corruption empowers. Continue Reading...

On Life Support

Revive is a word commonly associated with the efforts that paramedics and other medical personnel make when someone has stopped breathing. Whether that’s due to slipping beneath the pond ice or being pulled under by a nasty California rip tide, the consequences of inaction will be fatal. Continue Reading...

Bureaucracy and Institutional Evil

It’s a truism that progressive Christians emphasize the pervasiveness of structural or institutional evil, often at the expense of individual or personal sin. The structures of the world are broken and they, not individuals, are responsible for the enduring injustices in the world. Continue Reading...