Acton Vault

In this episode of Action Vault, we bring you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 2014 Acton Lecture Series, featuring F.H. Buckley, Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law, speaking on the unchecked presidential power we’re witnessing today in our government. Buckley explains that what we assume was the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a separation of p...

In this episode, we bring you an interview that was conducted as part of our 2022 Business Matters online conference, featuring Mark Murray, former president of Meijer (one of America’s largest private companies), former president of Grand Valley State University, and former budget director for the State of Michigan.    Murray draws from his diverse leadership experience to speak on how each of us...

Do private property and religious liberty go hand in hand? Are they truly inseparable? The Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president emeritus and co-founder of the Acton Institute, defends private property as the solid ground of religious liberty in this contribution to the 2016 Acton Lecture Series.  Subscribe to our podcasts Acton Lecture Series  About Rev. Robert A. Sirico  Acton research on private pro...

With more than a million words of trenchant journalism under his byline and more citations in The Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations than any writer then alive, P.J. O’Rourke had established himself as America’s premier political satirist. Both TIME and The Wall Street Journal labeled him “the funniest writer in America.”   In this episode, O'Rourke delivers remarks on the current state of...

In this episode, we bring you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 2014 Acton Lecture Series featuring Jay Richards, Ph. D., senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and New York Times bestselling author, speaking on why a belief in God is necessary for libertarianism to flourish.  Subscribe to our podcasts Acton Lecture Series  About Jay Richards  Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...

Dr. Gerald McDermott addresses the important issue of the state of public virtue and what might be done to restore it in his address at Acton's "Reclaiming the West: Public Spirit and Public Virtue" event in Washington D.C. on December 6, 2017. Subscribe to our podcasts About Dr. Gerald McDermott  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Sam Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, delivered the opening plenary lecture of Acton University 2017. Gregg’s lecture focuses on the very real dangers faced by religious believers around the world (and especially in developing nations). He also touches on threats to religious freedom within western nations. These threats, ironically, often stem from modern ideolo...

Organizations commonly face roadblocks when trying to address poverty or engage effectively with people directly affected by it. When it comes to poverty alleviation, organizations tend to think that what is needed is the perfect strategy, a new idea, or a great program. What’s most important, however, are the people involved, the relationships built, and the process we use to get to the solution....

We often say what’s right and what’s wrong can be vague and not always easy to discern. The natural law tradition says that’s nonsense: Moral basics are known to every human being. If this is true, then we aren’t ignorant of the good, just self-deceived. So what happens when we tell ourselves that we don’t know what we really do know? In this episode, we bring you a presentation that was delivered...

In this episode, we bring you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 1994 Acton Lecture Series featuring Sister Connie Driscoll speaking on the welfare myth.  Sister Connie (1933–2005) was the co-founder of St. Martin de Porres House of Hope, now the Southside Center of Hope, in an impoverished neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. It’s a community for women and their children who a...

There are competing creation “myths” regarding American liberty. The Jamestown, Va., settlers of 1607 have vied with the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony in New England for dominance in America’s self-understanding of its origins. In this presentation, delivered as part of the 2019 Acton Lecture Series, Alan Crippen argues that these narratives have obscured the role of William Penn and his “holy e...

On May 5, 1994, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas delivered the keynote address at the Acton Institute’s Fourth Anniversary Dinner. His remarks were entitled, “Religion and the Constitution of Liberty.”    Subscribe to our podcasts    About Clarence Thomas Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we bring you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 2021 Acton Lecture Series, featuring Rachel Ferguson, Ph. D., speaking on black liberation through the marketplace.    Viewing America’s record on individual rights and constitutional order through a classical liberal lens, Ferguson sees the undeniable and blatant injustices perpetrated against black Americans. But she...

Robert Doar, a Morgridge Scholar and the president of the American Enterprise Institute, explores the history and future of welfare policy in America. Weaving together personal anecdotes and statistical insights, he explains the significant progress that has been made to alleviate poverty in past decades. At the same time, Doar maps out many of the obstacles still standing in the way of further ad...

America has experienced a surge in populism in recent years that has turned the established order of our politics on its head. Where does such a movement come from? What can history tell us about where it's going? And what can statesmen do to channel this political outrage for the good of all the people? In this episode, we bring you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 2016 Acton Lect...

On November 17, 2021, an audience of Acton supporters and friends gathered in Grand Rapids, Michigan to celebrate Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s three decades of leadership of the institute as he officially transitioned to the role of President Emeritus. Sirico’s remarks were a reflection on those years of work in service of the cause of liberty, the current state of political and social discourse in the...

Our world is a world of ever evolving technology. Every positive advancement in digital technology inevitably comes with an encroachment on privacy whether it be in business, health, families, or freedom. From rampant cancel culture and propaganda on social networks to data collection and surveillance, social manipulation has become the new digital contagion—influencing our behavior and threatenin...

Andrew Klavan is a screenwriter, author, and two-time Edgar Award winner. Among his works are the internationally bestselling crime novels True Crime and Don't Say a Word. Both books were adapted into screenplays and went on to Hollywood success—the former directed by Clint Eastwood and the latter directed by and starring Michael Douglas.  A prolific author, Klavan has also written thrillers for y...

Distributism is a political and economic theory under which the means of productions would be redistributed to as many people as possible, as part of an effort to decentralize power to the greatest extent possible, and to protect the rights of smaller political and economic units against the encroachments of both central government and big business. While distributists and free market advocates ca...

Religious-liberty litigants have won 18 of their past 19 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, 14 of them unanimously or by supermajority vote. But a number of those decisions have been on narrow legal grounds and have not resolved the continuing tension between secular culture and those trying to live their faith in the public square. In this episode, John Bursch, vice president of appellate advocacy...

Is the market economy rooted in greed and self-interest? Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, says no. Many degrees of love are at the core of what it means to exchange, invent, speculate, and produce. True love of neighbor cannot neglect private ownership, the profit motive, and personal vision, all of which are necessary for a vibrant economy that works for everyone...

On Thursday, Sept. 23, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute, debated Joshua Davis, executive director at the Institute for Christian Socialism, at the St. Augustine's Catholic Center at the University of Idaho on the question of Capitalism vs. Socialism: How does each system serve a Christian conception of a healthy society? Subscribe to Acton Vault, Acton Unwind,...

What makes a president "good" or "bad"? Are historians always the best judge of such things? Or should we be getting second opinions?  In this lecture, Larry Reed, president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education, offers his answers to these questions while taking us on a stroll through the triumphs and follies of some of the men who have occupied the White House. Reed’s presentation wa...

Between Catholics and Protestants, the list of common beliefs, values, and practices is much longer and more substantive than the differences. (Assuming, of course, they are not heretics to their own traditions.) Why, then, has our alliance been so weak in stemming the tide of public secularization, immoralism, and decadence? In this episode, we bring you a lecture that was delivered as part of Ac...

In this episode, we are bringing you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 2014 Acton Lecture Series featuring John “Chuck” Chalberg as he plays the role of G.K. Chesterton. In his performance, Chesterton speaks about America, which he thought was the only country with the soul of a church.  He also addresses the state of the family, past and present.  His starting point and end point i...