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A Special Edition of Acton Vault featuring Acton Line
This week, we’re bringing you one of the plenary lectures from this year’s Acton University, featuring Bishop Robert Barron speaking on “The Philosophical Roots of Wokeism.”
"Wokeism” is arguably the most influential public philosophy in our country today. It has worked its way into the minds and hearts of our young people, into the world of entertainment, and into the boardrooms of powerful corporations. But what is it precisely, and where did it come from? I will argue in my presentation that “wokeism” is a popularization of critical theory, a farrago of ideas coming out of the French and German academies in the mid-twentieth century. Until we understand its origins in the thinking of Adorno, Horkheimer, Derrida, Marcuse, and Foucault, we will not know how critically to engage this dangerous philosophy.
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One of America’s success stories is its economy. For over a century, it has been the envy of the world. The opportunity it generates has inspired millions of people to want to become American.
Today, however, America’s economy is at a crossroads. Many have lost confidence in the country’s commitment to economic liberty. Across the political spectrum, many want the government to play an even greater role in the economy via protectionism, industrial policy, stakeholder capitalism, or even quasi-socialist policies. Numerous American political and business leaders are embracing these ideas, and traditional defenders of markets have struggled to respond to these challenges in fresh ways. Then there is a resurgent China bent on eclipsing the United States’s place in the world. At stake is not only the future of the world’s biggest economy, but the economic liberty that remains central to America’s identity as a nation.
But managed decline and creeping statism do not have to be America’s only choices, let alone its destiny. In his new book The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World (2022), Samuel Gregg insists that there is an alternative. And that is a vibrant market economy grounded on entrepreneurship, competition, and trade openness, but embedded in what America’s founding generation envisaged as the United States’s future: a dynamic Commercial Republic that takes freedom, commerce, and the common good of all Americans seriously, and allows America as a sovereign-nation to pursue and defend its interests in a dangerous world without compromising its belief in the power of economic freedom.
Samuel Gregg is Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy at the American Institute for Economic Research, and an Affiliate Scholar at the Acton Institute. The author of 17 books—including the prize-winning The Commercial Society (Rowman &Littlefield), Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy (Edward Elgar), Becoming Europe (Encounter), the prize-winning Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization (Regnery), and most recently, The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World (Encounter), as well as over 400 articles and opinion-pieces—he writes regularly on political economy, finance, American conservatism, Western civilization, and natural law theory. He is a Contributing Editor at Law & Liberty and a Visiting Scholar in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He can be followed on Twitter @drsamuelgregg
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In this episode, we’re bringing you a talk from our Acton Lecture Series from 2019.
To be economically literate requires neither formal training nor advanced study. For those with the inclination, the most valuable economic principles can be understood with just a little nurturing of the so-called “economic way of thinking.” In this talk, Dr. Sarah Estelle shares how she sees the economic way of thinking as instructive in some of the ways we can love, too. What does economics have to say about our love for mankind? our neighbors around the globe? the least of these among us? our local communities and families? Integrating a Christian perspective and sound economics, Estelle considers in what cases market exchange can communicate love and in which situations market approaches would only crush it.
Dr. Sarah Estelle is an associate professor of economics at Hope College. Most recently she has undertaken work bridging the principles of traditional Christian teaching and classical liberal economics and especially applying the lessons of economics to the Christian virtue of love, thickly construed. She is the director of Religious Liberty in the States, a brand-new statistical index that measures the legal safeguards for the free exercise of religion in the United States. Dr. Estelle is the founding director of Hope’s Markets & Morality student organization, which explores economic issues through a Christian lens and brings speakers and film screenings to campus to enrich the Hope community’s understanding of markets. Markets & Morality celebrates its 10th year in 2022–23.
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Few technologies are as simultaneously disruptive and controversial as cryptocurrency. Attitudes among businesspeople range from viewing it as way to revolutionize the entire monetary system to seeing cryptocurrency as an inherently valueless asset destined for embarrassing collapse. The recent downfall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have fueled this debate further. Dr. Guido Hulsmann provides his perspective on this topic as one of the world's top Austrian economists and experts on the history of money. Michelle Abbs provides her perspective as one of the world's top women in NFTs. This session was a part of our Business Matters 2023 conference.
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The year is 1837. Imagine that you live in Calcutta and a man with a thick Boston accent offers you some ice cream. There is no such device as a refrigerator, much less a freezer, and yet here is a man offering you a cold (and delicious) treat. How did it get there? In this lecture from the 2019 Acton Lecture Series, Dave Hebert explains how ice harvesters in 19th century Boston were able to create their own system of property rights that allowed each person living around a local pond to thicken ice as needed. The result? These entrepreneurs shipped blocks of ice to destinations as far flung as India, opening up a new market to places where ice (and all its benefits) did not exist.
David Hebert graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics from Hillsdale College in 2009, and then attended George Mason University, where he earned a master's in 2011 and a doctorate in 2014. During graduate school, he was an F.A. Hayek fellow with the Mercatus Center and a fellow with the Department of Health Administration and Policy. He also worked with the Joint Economic Committee in the U.S. Congress. Since graduating, he has worked as an assistant professor at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, and Troy University in Troy, Alabama. He was also a fellow with the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, where he authored a comprehensive report on federal budget process reform.
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In this episode, we’re bringing you a talk from our Acton Lecture Series from January 2023, that was co-sponsored by the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
In their own time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Russell Kirk occupied different ends of the political spectrum. Their philosophies inspired the two most powerful movements of the age: the Nonviolent Movement (which led the larger Civil Rights Movement) and the modern Conservative Movement. Without King and Kirk modern American Social Justice liberalism and modern American conservatism as we know them would not exist. And yet, for all of their differences, our modern politics suffer because contemporary liberalism and conservatism lack the grounding in virtues, communitarian values and faith in an ordered universe that both Kingian Nonviolence and Kirkian Conservatism held fast to. Is it possible that by reacquainting ourselves with these lost traditions we could summon the better angels of left and right and restore a politics of virtue for the modern age?
John Wood Jr. is a writer, podcaster, and noted public speaker nationally recognized as a leading voice on issues of political and racial reconciliation. He is national ambassador for Braver Angels, America’s largest grassroots, bipartisan organization dedicated to political depolarization.
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Today’s episode is a brief one, and takes us back in time to 2000 and the remarks from Sir John Templeton at the Acton Institute’s Annual Dinner. It was at this dinner that Templeton was award the inaugural Acton Institute Faith & Freedom Award for his contributions to civil society as “a pioneering philanthropist with wisdom to understand the tremendous role of faith in the course of human history.”
Beginning a Wall Street career in 1937, he created some of the world’s largest and most successful international investment funds. Templeton, a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), was known for starting mutual funds’ annual meetings with a prayer. Templeton was knighted Sir John by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his many accomplishments. One of these was creating the world’s richest award, the $1 million-plus Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities presented annually in London since 1972. Because of his vision, the John Templeton Foundation continues to give away about $40 million a year – especially to projects, college courses, books, and essays on the benefits of cooperation between science and religion.
In 2003, The Templeton Foundation committed to a generous pledge to launch the Templeton Freedom Awards program with Atlas Network. Since that time, Atlas has presented these awards and grants to outstanding think tanks working to improve the public understanding of freedom. The Acton Institute has won two Templeton Freedom Prizes.
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There is no shortage of headlines pointing to another powerful corporation run amok or the consumer base being manipulated. These types of issues have cast a significant shadow on the legitimacy and purpose of business, even the possibility of a good or moral business. This lecture from James Otteson aims to present how a renewed vision of the interconnectedness of morality and prosperity is key to building and sustaining a properly functioning society. Honorable and life-giving business may actually be integral to creating social institutions that produce meaningful value.
James Otteson earned his bachelor of arts degree from the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame in 1990. After completing his undergraduate degree, he attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, earning an M.A. in philosophy in 1992. He then joined the philosophy department at the University of Chicago, receiving a Ph.D. in 1997.
He has held visiting scholar positions at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, then located at Bowling Green State University; at the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, then located at the University of Aberdeen; at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities at the University of Edinburgh; in the economics and philosophy departments at the University of Missouri-St. Louis; and in the government department at Georgetown University. He has also taught in the economics department at New York University.
Otteson lectures widely on Adam Smith, classical liberalism, political economy, business ethics, and related issues, including for The Fund for American Studies, the Adam Smith Society, the Acton Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Tikvah Fund.
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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 two decades of the Great Depression and the New Deal and facing the rise of radical ideologies abroad; the American Right seemed beaten, broken, and adrift. Then in 1953, Russell Kirk released his masterpiece, The Conservative Mind. More than any other published work of the time, this book became the intellectual touchstone for a reinvigorated movement and began a sea change in Americans’ attitudes toward traditionalism.
Brad Birzer’s biography recounts the story of Kirk’s life and work, with attention paid not only to his writings on politics and economics, but also on literature and culture, both subjects dear to Kirk’s heart and central to his thinking.
Dr. Bradley J. Birzer holds the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History at Hillsdale College, and also serves as an Associate Professor of History.
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Dr. Matson's lecture explored how in the British tradition, political economy, which partly emerged out of discourses in natural theology, ethics and jurisprudence, casts some light on the content of our moral obligations. Drawing on Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, he desicussed how commerce in the eighteenth century came to be depicted as a mode of cooperation—either literally with God or metaphorically with our fellow human beings—through which we serve the common good. That depiction energized the emerging authorization of commercial enterprise, helping to illustrate the virtue of what Deirdre McCloskey calls the “bourgeois virtues,” an understanding which contributed to the Great Enrichment. The depiction continues to edify business as a calling and elaborate how freedom serves the good of humankind.
Erik W. Matson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center and the Deputy Director of the Adam Smith Program in George Mason University’s Department of Economics. He serves as an Online Course Lecturer at The King’s College, New York. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in 2017.
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In this episode, we’re bringing you a panel from our recent Poverty Cure Summit.
The Poverty Cure Summit provides an opportunity for participants to listen to scholars, human service providers, and community leaders address the most critical issues we face today that can either exacerbate or alleviate poverty. These speakers will join panel discussions to discuss the legal, economic, social, and technological issues pertaining to both domestic (U.S.) and global poverty. Rooted in foundational principles of anthropology, politics, natural law, and economics, participants gained a deeper understanding of the root causes of poverty and identified practical means to reduce it and promote human flourishing.
This panel examines charity in the Muslim tradition.
The featured panelists are:
Ali Salman, founding member & CEO, Islam and Liberty Network.
Mahmoud El-Gamal, Professor of Economics and Statistics, Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar, Chair in Islamic Economics, Finance, and Management, Rice University
Moderator: Abdullah bin Hamid Ali, Founding Director of the Lamppost Education Initiative
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For this episode, we are taking you back to June 17, 1997 and the Acton Institute's 7th Annual Dinner in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The guest of honor that evening was Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
Scalia, who passed away suddenly on February 13, 2016, was a jurisprudential giant. One of the foremost proponents of originalist and textualist interpretation of the Constitution and law, his witty, humorous, and frequently biting writing style made his dissenting opinions, and sometimes his majority opinions, both must-reads and very accessible to non-lawyers.
His remarks to those gathered at Acton's Annual Dinner were entitled "On Interpreting the Constitution". In them, he explained his originalist approach to Constitutional law and the severe drawbacks that he saw with any alternative method of interpretation,
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There's been renewed interest in the role Christianity has played in liberalism since Larry Siedentop’s 2014 book, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism. Building on Siedentop, Daniel Klein says universal benevolent monotheism, and Christianity in particular, has led to the articulation of a specific social grammar and corresponding rights—in short Adam Smith’s “liberal plan.” But can liberalism be sustained in a world that no longer takes its ethics from that monotheism?
Daniel Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where Erik Matson and he lead a program in Adam Smith. He is also associate fellow at the Ratio Institute (Stockholm), research fellow at the Independent Institute, and chief editor of Econ Journal Watch. He and Matson also lead CL Press and curate the Liberty Fund column called Just Sentiments.
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Books connect us in a very real way to people and ideas from the past. This talk will explore how we can help the current and future generations understand the thoughts and the minds of the thinkers of the past through printed books and publications.
For the past 25 years, Kristopher Bex has served as the President and board member of The Remnant Trust, Inc. Currently located in Lubbock, Texas and Cambridge City, Indiana, The Remnant Trust was founded in 1997 and incorporated in 1999. Mr. Bex served The Remnant Trust in its infancy as an original board member and incorporator. He found its ideas to be unique, interesting and thought it might accomplish some good in a rapidly evolving world of modernizing technology.
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For this episode, we're bringing you a session from our recent Poverty Cure Summit. A conversation entitled "Hope for the City: Neighborhoods, Commerce, and Social Capital" featuring Rachel Ferguson, Justin S. Beene, and Ismael Hernandez.
The Poverty Cure Summit provides an opportunity for participants to listen to scholars, human service providers, and community leaders address the most critical issues we face today that can either exacerbate or alleviate poverty. Speakers joined panel discussions to discuss the legal, economic, social, and technological issues pertaining to both domestic (U.S.) and global poverty. Rooted in foundational principles of anthropology, politics, natural law, and economics, participants gained a deeper understanding of the root causes of poverty and identify practical means to reduce it and promote human flourishing.
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In 1867, Sen. Charles Sumner posed the question “are we a nation?” in the wake of the Civil War. As America confronts new extremes of polarization in the 21st century, the question is inescapable again. Samuel Goldman explores the ways the U.S. does and does not correspond to historical conceptions of the nation-state.
Samuel Goldman is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is also director of the Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom. In addition to his academic work, Goldman is an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute and has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications.
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The dramatic social changes of the past century have left our world with a fragile sense of identity. Changes in technology and entertainment have constrained spiritual imaginations and reoriented our collective vision of the good life. These trends pave the way for charismatic leaders in politics, the marketplace, and religious communities to provide meaning through belonging to a group, especially one defined by a sense of “movement.” But “movement” thinking disincentivizes the slower work of building—be that the building of character or institutions, and the disastrous result has been on display for decades. Our hope for correcting course is found only in embracing a deeper, more rooted vision of virtue, the brevity of life, and a love for the world around us.
Mike Cosper is a writer and podcast producer/senior director of podcasts at Christianity Today. In 2021 he produced and hosted The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, a serialized podcast telling the story of a Seattle megachurch’s stunning success and collapse. The podcast served as a venue to explore a variety of questions and issues that trouble the church, including character formation, gender, celebrity, and the distorting power of media. His next series launches later this year.
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Libraries are filled with books on the parables of Christ, and rightly so. In the words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “While civilizations have come and gone, these stories continue to teach us anew with their freshness and their humanity.” Two millennia later, the New Testament parables remain ubiquitous, and yet few have stopped to glean wisdom from one of Christ’s most prevalent analogies: the use of money.
In The Economics of the Parables, Rev. Robert Sirico pulls back the veil of modernity to reveal the timeless economic wisdom of the parables. Thirteen central stories—including “The Laborers in the Vineyard,” “The Rich Fool,” “The Five Talents,” and “The Faithful Steward”—serve as his guide, revealing practical lessons in caring for the poor, stewarding wealth, distributing inheritances, navigating income disparities, and resolving family tensions.
Rev. Robert A. Sirico is the president emeritus and co-founder of the Acton Institute, and pastor emeritus of Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Grand Rapids, Mich. His writings on religious, political, economic, and social matters are published in a variety of journals, including: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the London Financial Times, the Washington Times, The Detroit News, and National Review. He is the author of numerous books, including Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, A Moral Basis for Liberty, and The Economics of the Parables.
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This episode takes us back in time to September 2018 for a talk from our Acton Lecture Series.
Students of 20th century American history know of the importance of the Marshall Plan to the effort to rebuild Europe after World War II, as well as the leading role taken by the United States in building international institutions and alliances that would be central to maintaining peace and checking the expansionist desires of the communist world. What you may not know is that a central figure in the creation of those institutions was a United States Senator from Michigan who, prior to the war, had been a leader of the isolationist faction in Congress. The story of how Arthur Vandenberg came to be one of the founders of modern American foreign policy is recounted in the book Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century, from Hank Meijer.
Hank Meijer is co-chairman and CEO of Meijer, Inc. in Grand Rapids and vice-chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation. He serves on the executive committee of the Food Marketing Institute and is a trustee of the National Constitution Center and The Henry Ford. He is a member of the University of Michigan’s President’s Advisory Group and the Ford School of Public Policy board of advisors and chairs the board of the Kettering Foundation.
His biography of Senator Vandenberg was published in 2017 by the University of Chicago Press.
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Anyone who has read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings can gather that their author hated tyranny, but few know that the novelist who once described himself as a hobbit “in all but size” was—even by hobbit standards—a zealous proponent of economic freedom and small government. There is a growing concern among many that the West is sliding into political, economic, and moral bankruptcy. In his beloved novels of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien has drawn us a map to freedom.
Several books ably explore how Tolkien’s Catholic faith informed his fiction. None until now have centered on how his passion for liberty and limited government also shaped his work, or how this passion grew directly from his theological vision of man and creation. The Hobbit Party fills this void. Jonathan Witt and Jay Richards bring to The Hobbit Party a combined expertise in literary studies, political theory, economics, philosophy, and theology.
Jonathan Witt, PhD, is Executive Editor of Discovery Institute Press and a senior fellow and senior project manager with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. His latest book is Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design (DI Press, 2018) written with Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola. Witt also authored Intelligent Design Uncensored (IVP, 2010) with William Dembski, and A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (IVP, 2006) with Benjamin Wiker. He is also the author of The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot (Ignatius, 2014), written with Jay Richards.
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