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Ford v Ferrari and the virtue of courage
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By John Couretas • November 20, 2019
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There is a scene in the terrific new film Ford v Ferrari where Henry Ford II grills his lieutenant Lee Iaccoca about the failed bid to acquire Enzo Ferrari’s racing car enterprise. Ford learns that Ferrari has a message for him, and Iacocca dutifully delivers: “He said Ford makes ugly little cars in ugly factories.” And there the story takes off, following the key figures: legendary race team manager Carroll Shelby, (played with droll understatement by Matt Damon) and Ken Miles, the misfit British racing car driver (captured with total authenticity by Christian Bale). Their mission is to defeat Ferrari in the 1966 24 Hours of LeMans with a new purpose built Ford GT40. The classical and Christian virtues (arête in the Greek, or habitual excellence) are all over Ford v Ferrari. These are among others honesty (truthful at all times and lacking in hypocrisy) and faithfulness (faithful to a calling, to family, to friends). Miles is faithful to his wife Mollie – the civilizing force among the alpha competitors that inhabit her life – and to the son who accompanies him to the track and garage to learn by seeing. But prime among these virtues is undoubtedly courage.
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Acton Line podcast: How property rights save the planet
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November 20, 2019
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Panic surrounding climate change and the environment is on the rise and doomsday predictions abound. Most headlines about the environment only tell one story: that the environment is on the decline and that this decline is a result of economic development. In March, The Guardian declared that “ending climate change requires the end of capitalism.” But in the midst of calls for the Green New Deal and calls to overhaul our economic system, there’s another story unfolding. Holly Fretwell, Director of Outreach and a Research Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, joins this episode to explain how the environment is being improved through market based approaches. What does free market environmentalism look like and how are conservation efforts helping the climate?
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Trending on the Powerblog
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On Friday, November 8, a 22-year-old French college student set himself on fire outside the government agency that administers university housing and living allowances. The reason? The government had revoked his monthly benefits after he failed his courses for the second year in a row. His suicide attempt touched off violent national protests that the government is perpetrating “violence” against the students of France’s tuition-free universities, because it reduced students’ monthly living stipend by $10 a month.
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His very public conversion and groundbreaking Gospel CD have made Kanye West perhaps the most conspicuous, and unlikely, champion of faith and moral values in America today. Yesterday, TV’s most-watched cable news channel turned to Acton Institute founder Rev. Robert Sirico to analyze West’s sincerity and impact on America’s most secular generation.
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Last Thursday, we were pleased to welcome Victor Claar, associate professor of economics in the Lutgert College of Business at Florida Gulf Coast University, to participate in the 2019 Acton Lecture Series with an address on the moral legacy of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, of course, had a massive impact on the understanding, teaching of, and implementation of economic principles in the second half of the 20th century (and still today); In this lecture, Claar examines the broader cultural impact of Keynesian thinking.
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Given the breakneck pace of improvements in automation and artificial intelligence, fears about job loss and human obsolescence are taking increasing space in the cultural imagination. The question looms: What is the future of human work in a technological age? At the recent World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China, Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alibaba’s Jack Ma weighed in on the topic—offering conflicting perspectives and predictions.
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Chicken giant or giant chicken? That is the question conservative cultural commentators are asking this week as news broke that restaurant chain Chick-fil-A, known for being closed on Sunday due to its owners’ Christian values, announced that it will no longer support the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Both organizations — the former of which, notably, is not simply a charity but a Christian denomination — have been labelled anti-LGBT by activists due to their hiring practices.
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