Acton Line

With fusionism – the strategic alliance of conservative foreign policy hawks, social conservatives and economic libertarians knitted together in the last half of the 20th century in opposition to international communism ­­– crumbling after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the modern conservative movement has been remaking itself in effort to address the problems of the current day. One of these seemi...

Charles Malik, the Lebanese diplomat and one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was intimately involved in the crises of his own day, from the challenge of international communism to the internal challenges and problems of the West itself. For Malik all of our challenges take the form of crises which, at their deepest levels, reflect Christ’s judgement. His profoundly th...

In his new book, The Socialist Temptation, author Iain Murray examines the resurgence of socialist ideology in America and across the world. Seemingly discredited just thirty years ago by the failures of the Soviet Union and Communist block Eastern Europe, socialism has seen a revival of support and popularity in the West. Murray sets out to explain why the socialist temptation endures even after...

On February 4th, 2004, a sophomore at Harvard University by the name of Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook. At the time, the social networking website was limited to only students at Harvard. And while other social networking platforms like MySpace and Friendster predated the launch of Facebook, it was that February day in Cambridge, Massachusetts that the age of social media was truly born. Tod...

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 has brought with it enormous costs. These include, first and foremost, an enormous cost in the terms of human life, with more than 178,000 deaths from the coronavirus in the United States alone, and at least 814,000 deaths worldwide, as of late August 2020. But also, with the pandemic have come significant economic costs, fiscal costs, and personal...

From accusations of embracing socialism leveled at the Obama administration by the Tea Party movement to the rise of self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders as the second highest vote-getter in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic Party primaries, socialism has been an emerging movement and topic of conversation in the American body politic. While polling data suggests that socialism is genera...

The conservative movement in America has always been evolving. From the old right of the progressive era to the conservative intellectual movement identified with William F. Buckley Jr. and National Review to the Reagan revolution to today, the political right in America has changed with the challenges it has faced and with the context of the times in which it has existed. The current iteration of...

Since debuting in the New York Times Magazine on August 14, 2019, the 1619 Project has ignited a debate about American history, the founding of the country and the legacy emanating from the nation’s history with chattel slavery. The project’s creator and editor, Nikole Hannah-Jones, has described the project as seeking to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans...

Richard Baxter, the English Puritan churchman and theologian, was perhaps one of most prolific English language author in the seventeenth century. His writings were wide ranging from doctrinal theology to devotional classics. And his practical theology was a model of German sociologist Max Weber’s understanding of the protestant work ethic. Baxter’s worldly aestheticism was focused on service to o...

Since 2006, economist Russ Roberts – the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution – has hosted the podcast EconTalk, a weekly deep conversation with economists and thinkers from other disciplines on ideas related both directly and indirectly to economics and the economic way of thinking. Economics is a powerful analytic tool which can empower us to choose more wisely as bot...

The latest term of the Supreme Court, which wrapped up on July 8th, saw the Court decide several cases with major implications for religious liberty. While the outcomes of Espinoza v. Montana, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania have been largely viewed as victories for advocates of expanding religious liberty in America, the court’s decis...

This week we’re rebroadcasting a conversation about religious liberty with Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, that was first released on the podcast in April of 2015. In the intervening five years since we first aired this episode, much has changed in our conversations on religious liberty – but much is still the same. While the focus is no lo...

Since late May, many parts of the United States have grappled with unrest. Anger over George Floyd's death sparked protests, with looting and violent riots breaking out as well. Protesters have also been defacing and tearing down statues across the country, including statues of confederate leaders as well as monuments to George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and even abolitionists. The Capitol Hill...

At the age of 13, Jimmy Lai escaped China to experience freedom in Hong Kong and grew to be one of Hong Kong’s highest-profile media moguls. Through his work, Lai founded the anti-Beijing newspaper Apple Daily and became an outspoken critic of the People’s Republic of China, solidifying him as one of Hong Kong’s most important pro-democracy voices. In this exclusive interview, Acton’s President an...

When Hong Kong was released from British rule and handed over to China in 1997, the United Kingdom and Beijing struck a deal that guaranteed the freedom of Hong Kong's citizens; the territory was to remain free from mainland China's authority for fifty years. This arrangement is often referred to as "one country, two systems." Hong Kong established its own governmental and economic systems and flo...

In 18th century France, the most-read book after the Bible was a work on political philosophy written by the Roman Catholic archbishop François Fénelon. Unfortunately, Fénelon's writings on economics, politics, and theology have largely been forgotten as only a fraction of his work has been translated into English. Fénelon was an important voice in France; during the enlightenment, he fought for t...

The tragic and disturbing footage of George Floyd's unjust death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers has been circulating for over a week. Floyd's death on May 25 has sparked protests across the country and even the world, but it's also sparked many violent riots in which people have been brutally killed and communities decimated. How can we helpfully approach policing reform and how shoul...

For over two years, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang campaigned across the country, building a coalition along the political spectrum. The main promise driving Yang's campaign was his "freedom dividend," a guaranteed income of $1,000 per month for every American citizen. This "dividend" is a form of universal basic income, an idea that's been around for centuries and one that's...

Religion plays, and has always played, a crucial role in American life. In the past 75 years, however, religiosity has been in rapid decline. What's causing the decline? In a new study from the American Enterprise Institute, demographer Lyman Stone helps answer. Lyman joins this episode to uncover his findings, including the history of religious life in the United States dating back four hundred y...

Bradley J. Birzer, professor of history and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College, joins this episode of Acton Line to speak about his newest book, "Beyond Tenebrae: Christian Humanism in the Twilight of the West." What is Christian humanism and what role does it play in the Republic of Letters? What does it mean to live as a Christian humanist? Birzer helps lay down...

As the United States continues to wrestle with the fallout of COVID-19, many people are falling back on their faith and the church for peace. Many churches have decided to hold services online, and local governments have also stepped in and put parameters around church attendance to help mitigate the spread of the virus. Some actions taken by local governments have been appropriate, but some other...

The United States has been in a state of emergency since mid-March as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In order to slow the spread of the virus, states have implemented various measures, including shelter-in-place orders, forcing millions of Americans to stay at home. Millions of individuals have now been furloughed or laid off permanently, and many are struggling to put food on the table. The e...

Homeschooling is growing in popularity. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education has shown that it's grown at a rate of over 60% in the last decade, as many families are deciding that educating their children at home is better than sending them to public or private schools. But Harvard University has a different opinion. In Harvard Magazine's May/June 2020 issue, one Harvard Law School professor...

On March 31, The Atlantic published an article titled "Beyond Originalism," written by Adrian Vermeule, professor of Constitutional law at Harvard Law School. In this piece, Vermeule argues that "the dominant conservative philosophy for interpreting the constitution has served its purpose and scholars ought to develop a more moral framework." Originalist interpretations of the Constitution simply...

Russell Kirk has long been known as perhaps the most important founding father of the American Conservative movement in the second half of the 20th century. In the early 1950s, America was emerging from the Great Depression and the New Deal, and was facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad; the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift. Then in 1953, Russell Kirk released his masterpiec...