Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Patrick Deneen'

May 14, 2026

Why Postliberalism Failed

(This essay is one of two forewords to James M. Patterson and Thomas D. Howes’s forthcoming Why Postliberalism Failed, published by the Acton Institute. Preorder here.) In the fall of 2017, I was invited to attend the Ramsey Colloquium in Washington, a gathering convened by R.R. Continue Reading...
April 28, 2026

The Economic End of History

The final dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 heralded the victory of Western democratic societies over communism and the ideologies of collectivism. Proponents of the market economy now had definitive proof that central economic planning cannot outperform a decentralized market order, in terms of creating goods that people value and distributing them in a timely, efficient manner. Continue Reading...
February 05, 2025

Fusionism and the Problem of Order

Fusionism—the union of libertarian political economy and traditional Judeo-Christian morality and spirituality—has been dubbed “the dead consensus” for some time. The consensus persists among American conservative intellectuals, but few have the energy to defend it against recent attacks. Continue Reading...
July 19, 2024

We Need More Cosmopolitan Christians

If there’s one particular type of person that the world’s most important cities—New York, Washington, D.C., London—need more than any other it’s … the saint. Of course, we need saints everywhere, but the cruciality of our cities as centers of culture means we have a special need for virtuous Christians to be in cities—first to sanctify them but also to take advantage of the abundance of resources and learn from the innovations found there. Continue Reading...
July 14, 2020

Integralism’s biggest fallacy

Recently, conservative circles have seen a sharp uptick in support for “Integralism.” Integralism is the belief that “the state should officially endorse the Catholic faith and act as the secular arm of the Church by punishing heresy among the baptized and by restricting false religious practices if they threaten Catholicism,” according to Robert T. Continue Reading...
July 05, 2020

Michael Matheson Miller to Patrick Deneen: Strong towns need strong economies

Among the most influential critics of the free market on the Right is Patrick Deneen, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. Acton Institute Senior Research Fellow Michael Matheson Miller has published a response in Law & Liberty to Deneen’s recent plea for a national policy to favor small communities (“Thinking Big to Act Small” in the American Compass). Continue Reading...
October 14, 2013

Deneen and Creative Destruction

Among many other bizarre claims in his most recent article at The American Conservative, Patrick Deneen writes, Today’s conservatives are liberals — they favor an economy that wreaks “creative destruction,” especially on the mass of “non-winners,” increasingly controlled by a few powerful actors who secure special benefits for themselves and their heirs…. Continue Reading...
October 12, 2012

The Campaign for Leviathan

The Obama Administration’s requirement for many religious institutions to provide contraception may be a relatively new policy. But as Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen explains, the “origin of the mandate lies in an impulse that can be dated back to the beginnings of the modern era and the rise of the state.” Continue Reading...