Acton Lecture Series

In this episode, we bring you a presentation that was delivered as part of the 2013 Acton Lecture Series, featuring Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, speaking on his book Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future.    In Becoming Europe, Gregg explains how European economic life has drifted in the direction of what Alexis de Tocqueville called “soft despotism” and ways in which similar trends are discernible in the United States. The good news is that economic decline is not inevitable and that the path to recovery lies in the distinctiveness of American economic culture. Yet there are ominous signs that some of the cultural foundations of America’s historically unparalleled economic success are being eroded in ways not easily reversible, and so the European experience should serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine.   Subscribe to our podcasts   About Samuel Gregg, D.Phil. (Oxon.)    Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can