Intellectuals

April 07, 2020

Thomas Aquinas versus Adrian Vermeule

The relationship between law, morality, and liberty is one of those topics that invariably generates fierce debate. And it usually plays out in very predictable ways. On the one hand, there are some whose first instinct is to lurch for a comprehensive legal response to any number of moral evils to which legal coercion may not be the most optimal or even just response: “There ought to be a law against that!” Continue Reading...

March 31, 2020

Jon Basil Utley, RIP

I had the privilege of being close to Jon Basil Utley (1934-2020) for the last 25 years of his life. Even though we disagreed on a few topics, we always did it with a smile. Continue Reading...

February 28, 2020

Can you create a libertarian dictatorship?

Bernie Sanders’ reflexive defense of Marxist dictators has raised concerns literally left and right. Democrats on the considerable space to his right worry that Sanders’ apologies will cost them the election, while leftists worry his rhetoric will cause people to equate socialism with tyranny. Continue Reading...

February 21, 2020

Three books to help you think like an economist

Everyone knows that there is a difference between knowing about something and knowing how to do something. The first is a superficial way of knowing, not a bad way to begin, but it is no substitute for the mastery which comes by integrating knowledge into experience. Continue Reading...

February 13, 2020

A concise natural law reading list

One of the occupational hazards of being a librarian is that people are always asking you for book recommendations. The truth is that recommending books is more difficult than it seems. Continue Reading...

February 05, 2020

Acton Institute ranks among world’s best in 2019 think tank report

A report on the global impact of think tanks has ranked the Acton Institute among the world’s most influential thought leaders. The University of Pennsylvania released its “2019 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report” last Friday. Continue Reading...

February 04, 2020

Sir Roger Scruton was a fearless ‘Knight of the West’

The late Sir Roger Scruton has been given many titles since his death on January 12. He’s been hailed as the “greatest conservative thinker of our age,” Britain’s “intellectual dissident” and beauty’s best modern defender. Continue Reading...

February 03, 2020

Catholics and classical liberals, yesterday and today

In many countries, debates we had 40 years ago are starting to be rehashed: can one be both a Catholic and a classical liberal? It’s good to remember some of the arguments that liberal Catholics used then to justify their positions. Continue Reading...

January 28, 2020

Churches, tax exemption, and the common good

Are churches tax exempt as a matter of privilege or right? What does tax exception cost communities and churches? Christianity Today has been hosting an interesting debate on these issues. Paul Matzko, Assistant Editor for Tech and Innovation at the CATO Institute, argued in the cover story of this month’s issue that tax exemption comes at a high a cost to the communities in which they are located: This feeling that churches don’t contribute to the common good is not uncommon in America. Continue Reading...

January 21, 2020

Bernie Sanders tweets a recipe for exacerbating the housing crisis

Note: An expanded version of this post was released as this week’s Acton Commentary. This week, Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, tweeted the following reaction to a story from The Economist describing rising American rent payments: This is a crisis. Continue Reading...

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