Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'revolution'

Inhumane Letters and the Joy of Violence

Babel: Or The Necessity of Violence, An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators Revolution is a pernicious novel showcasing the ability of literature to make evil appear good. Evaluating Babel requires considering the purpose of literature; how can a novel be technically excellent, yet fail to achieve literature’s high calling? Continue Reading...

Bourgeois Equality: The Modern World Can’t Be Explained By Material Causes

Economist Deirdre McCloskey is set to release the long-anticipated conclusion of the Bourgeois Era trilogy sometime next spring. The book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, will build on her thesis that our newfound prosperity is not primarily due to systems, tools, or materials, but the ideas and rhetoric behind them. Continue Reading...

Radio Free Acton: Examining the Ukrainian Crisis

In this edition of Radio Free Acton, Paul Edwards joins our crew to host a discussion of the crisis in the Ukraine, with perspective provided by Acton Director of Research Samuel Gregg, Director of Communications John Couretas, and with an insider’s perspective of current events from an evangelical Christian currently residing near Kiev. Continue Reading...

Kuyper on Revolution

From CLP‘s newly released Guidance for Christian Engagement in Government, the first-ever English translation of Abraham Kuyper’s Our Program: What we oppose is “the Revolution,” by which we mean the political and social system embodied in the French Revolution… What we combat, on principle and without compromise, is the attempt to totally change how a person thinks and how he lives, to change his head and his heart, his home and his country—to create a state of affairs the very opposite of what has always been believed, cherished, and confessed, and so to lead us to a complete emancipation from the sovereign claims of Almighty God. Continue Reading...

Distributists Ignore the Lessons of History

Distributism is not a new idea—it wasn’t conceived by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. As Belloc explains in The Servile State, their idea was a return to certain economic principles of medieval Europe—a guild system, wider ownership of the means of production, etc.—in Continue Reading...

‘Liberty, fraternity, equality, adultery!’

There is a fascinating article from City Journal‘s Myron Magnet titled, “Mr. Sammler’s City,” which gives some insight and background to Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet. This is one of Bellow’s novels I read for my research on Henderson the Rain King, and Magnet’s piece serves as an excellent primer. Continue Reading...