Jimmy Lai’s sterling character in the face of totalitarian adversity is why we have awarded him our 2020 Faith & Freedom Award.

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‘God is always at my center’:

Jimmy Lai receives Acton Institute’s 2020 Faith and Freedom Award ([link removed] )

By Rev. Ben Johnson • November 25, 2020

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Everyone in the global fight for liberty has some item that cultivated his intellectual palate. For Chinese dissident Jimmy Lai, it was a candy bar.

As an eight-year-old boy, he worked as a baggage carrier in a railway station in his native mainland China. After he carried the bag of a visitor from Hong Kong, the man gave the future billionaire a piece of chocolate. “It was amazing,” he says. Eating that delectable sweet made him believe “Hong Kong must be Heaven, because I’ve never tasted anything like that.” One bite of that confection gave him a taste for freedom.

At the age of 12, he sailed off – alone – to Hong Kong, hidden in the bottom of a fishing junket. “In the morning, I smelled a lot of food that I never smelled, the great aroma of food,” Lai remembers. “It was as if I arrived in Heaven.” Waking up in that bustling land of opportunity, surrounded by the abundance that economic freedom facilitates, “I knew I had a future.”

Lai’s prowess in the fashion industry turned him into a billionaire. But at the time when most people would concentrate on how to enjoy their wealth ([link removed] ) , he felt his homeland calling. On June 4, 1989, no one could block out the sound, as Chinese tanks crushed peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square. The assault struck a deeply personal chord with Lai. “It’s like my mother was calling,” he says, “and my heart opened up.”

Lai used his fortune to begin publishing the Apple Daily. Its honest coverage of Beijing made the newspaper one of the most popular in Hong Kong. Lai says his vocation as an entrepreneur ([link removed] ) compelled him to spread liberty through the printed word. “In the media business, you deliver information, then you deliver choice, and choice is freedom,” he says.

His activities soon caught the attention of the Chinese Communist Party. After China’s aggressive (read: illegal) combination of industrial insourcing and global exports drove decades of double-digit GDP growth ([link removed] ) , the world’s newest economic powerhouse suppressed internal dissent ([link removed] ) through increasingly violent means ([link removed] ) . Soon, the CCP turned its eyes on Lai’s honest publication.

Lai’s love of freedom landed him in government confinement. More than 200 police officers stormed ([link removed] ) the offices of Lai’s newspaper on August 10 to arrest him and two of his sons for violating China’s draconian new “national security law ([link removed] ) .” Lai already faced five years’ imprisonment for trumped-up charges ([link removed] ) of intimidating a reporter. He was acquitted ([link removed] ) of that case in September, but the possibility of a longer prison term looms over the 71 year old.

Lai, who owns numerous mansions around the world, could have fled Hong Kong at the first sign of trouble. He has instead committed himself to fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to speak truth to power. His godfather, Wall Street Journal editorial board member William McGurn, has called Lai “Hong Kong’s Thomas More.”

The Acton Institute ([link removed] ) agrees that Lai’s sterling character in the face of totalitarian adversity deserves all the plaudits we can muster. For that reason, we have awarded Lai our 2020 Faith and Freedom Award.

The awards ceremony took place as the Acton Institute held an online celebration of our 30th anniversary on Wednesday night. Video clips featured prominent speakers from previous annual dinners, include Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., Chuck Colson, and Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The one-hour affair traversed the full history of the Acton Institute, from the day Co-founders Rev. Robert A. Sirico and Kris Mauren met, to their trips through the rubble of the Berlin Wall and their triumphant visits to the ash heap of socialism as the free market outperformed command economics in the former Eastern Bloc.

The evening’s penultimate event came as Mauren and Rev. Sirico presented Lai with the 2020 Faith and Freedom award over a video link. “I thank Friedrich Hayek for his inspirations for me to determine to fight for freedom in my life,” said Lai, who also thanked Hong Kong and the Roman Catholic Church for their formative influences. The Catholic website Crux reported ([link removed] ) part of Lai’s remarks:

“I came here with one dollar and the freedom here has given me the opportunity to build up myself. And the value that is underlying this freedom is so precious and that’s exactly what we are fighting for in Hong Kong now,” he said.

“Freedom has a price,” Lai says.

That fight, which so many believed had been won in the 1990s, proves to Rev. Sirico that bad ideas are never fully vanquished. Crux quoted him telling the teleconference’s viewers:

“When you see a man like this, who is looking at a potential jail sentence in a Chinese cell it prompts in us a certain inspiration but also an awareness that socialism is resilient,” Sirico said. “The collectivism idea, the idea of dominating other people, that politics is the solution to our problems … These are the challenges we’re facing this day in age.”

The Acton Institute’s 30th anniversary celebration comes at a crucial moment in the West. Socialism, even Communism, enjoys disturbingly high levels of popularity ([link removed] ) in the U.S., especially among young people. It’s bad enough that socialism masquerades as economics, but it increasingly takes on all the trappings of a religion ([link removed] ) . As collectivist ideology fills the void left by Christianity, socialism slowly suffocates true religious faith ([link removed] ) beneath the weight of its intellectual pretensions. It weaponizes government and pressures the shrinking private sector to punish its political enemies ([link removed] ) .

Socialism, never known for its productivity, has the ability to produce myriads of Jimmy Lais.

Jimmy Lai takes solace in the fact that, through the mystery of Jesus Christ’s identification with His believers ([link removed] ) , his Lord shares in his sorrows – and in some way, Lai’s persecution allows him to share in Christ’s temporal sufferings. That strengthens him to bear whatever burden may be coming with confidence and assurance in God’s providence. “It is always in my mind as a Catholic that God is always my center,” Lai says.

Like Jimmy Lai, anyone who puts God at the center will never miss the target ([link removed] ) .

Acton Line podcast:

Ismael Hernandez & Peter Greer on addressing poverty ([link removed] )

November 25, 2020

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For this week’s episode, we’re bringing you a conversation that was a part of Acton’s recent Poverty Cure Summit.

The Poverty Cure Summit provided an opportunity for participants to listen to scholars, human service providers, and practitioners address the most critical issues we face today which can either exacerbate or alleviate poverty. These speakers discussed the legal, economic, social, and technological issues pertaining to both domestic and global poverty. Rooted in foundational principles of anthropology, politics, natural law, and economics, participants had the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the root causes of poverty and identify practical means to reduce it and promote human flourishing.

In this conversation, Acton’s Michael Matheson Miller spoke with Ismael Hernandez (executive director of The Freedom & Virtue Institute) and Peter Greer (president & CEO of HOPE International) to examine the challenge of poverty in the US and internationally, and the most effective ways to think about poverty in light of the transcendent dignity of the human person.

Listen to the Episode
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Next week! Acton Lecture Series [Virtual]:

Transformational Leadership in a Time of Crises

December 3, 2020 ([link removed] )

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Today’s “new normal” demands authentic leaders who are grounded and yet reflective. Many of us go through life without a rhythm of both reflecting and discerning. Join us as we hear from Justin Beene learn how leaders can grow and contribute to the flourishing of our families, organizations, and culture during a time of crises.

This lecture is livestream only. A free livestream of this lecture will be available to view @ 12 noon Eastern on December 3.

Register now
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Pandemic or not, America has the best healthcare in the world ([link removed] )

By Hadley Heath Manning • November 23, 2020

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When President Donald Trump fell ill with COVID-19, there was absolutely no contemplation of moving America’s head of state to another country to receive healthcare services. This might be surprising, considering the oft-quoted World Health Organization ranking of our healthcare system at 37th globally. Wouldn’t we want our president to be treated in the country with the very best healthcare?

The problem, of course, is that international comparisons in healthcare often mislead. This was true before the pandemic, but it has also been true in the midst of it.

Read more
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