Acton Vault
From the archives of the Acton Institute, Acton Vault brings you stories, talks, conversations, and lectures from our 30-plus years of history – all focused on illustrating the Acton Institute's vision of a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.
Episodes
July 12, 2023 • 49 mins
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 boardroom...
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April 7, 2023 • 61 mins
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 protectio...
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March 17, 2023 • 60 mins
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 t...
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March 3, 2023 • 60 mins
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 ...
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February 17, 2023 • 65 mins
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 righ...
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February 3, 2023 • 64 mins
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 Co...
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January 20, 2023 • 15 mins
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 ...
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January 6, 2023 • 46 mins
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 properl...
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December 30, 2022 • 77 mins
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....
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December 23, 2022 • 59 mins
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—th...
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December 16, 2022 • 51 mins
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 b...
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December 9, 2022 • 36 mins
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 frequen...
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December 2, 2022 • 64 mins
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 i...
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November 25, 2022 • 53 mins
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 Remna...
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November 18, 2022 • 62 mins
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 eithe...
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November 11, 2022 • 62 mins
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 di...
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November 4, 2022 • 64 mins
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 “movem...
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October 28, 2022 • 36 mins
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 ...
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October 21, 2022 • 61 mins
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 commun...
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October 14, 2022 • 42 mins
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...
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