On December 2nd, 2020, the economist Walter E. Williams passed away at the age of 84.
Williams worked his way out of grinding poverty in the Philadelphia housing projects to chair George Mason University’s economics department. Over his career he authored 10 books and more than 150 other publications, and become one of the most recognized commentators on our American public life of the last four decades. Williams spread his message of racial equality, the dignity of work, and the morality of capitalism through his syndicated newspaper column, PBS documentaries, and frequent radio and TV appearances.
Today, we feature a presentation that Dr. Williams gave in 1994 for the Institute’s Acton Lecture Series, discussing the legitimate role of government in a free society.
A quick heads up: as we mentioned, this audio is from 1994. Our production team has done a lot of work to clean it up, but in the beginning of the talk Dr. Williams’ audio is very faint. Rather than cut out the beginning of his remarks, we’ve left them in. If you want to skip ahead to where the audio becomes clearer, then you can jump to the 7:46 mark in the podcast.
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Walter Williams on the legitimate role of government in a free society

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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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Word on Fire Catholic Ministries

The Philosophical Roots of Wokeism

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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The Next American Economy | Amazon

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The Next American Economy: Free Markets or Economic Nationalism?

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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The Economic Ways of Loving

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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Cryptocurrency, Decentralized Finance, and Web 3.0.: Substance or Hype?

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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Walter Williams on the legitimate role of government in a free society

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