Social and ethical issues
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Apparently some people never get tired of arguing about whether the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. Happily, though, there is a link there to G.E.M. Anscombe’s “Mr Truman’s Degree” in its entriety, which I don’t think I’ve been able to find on the web before now. I mean, look: in terms of Read more
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Jim Henley asked for a libertarian justification for animal cruelty laws here. Other libs have chimed in here and here. As it happens, I was recently reading an article by Stephen R. L. Clark called “Animals, Ecosystems, and the Liberal Ethic” (The Monist, Vol. 70:1, Jan. 1987) where he tries to articulate a rationale for Read more
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(This post actually started out short. Honest!) Christopher (at his new blog) directs our attention to this article by Andrew Linzey on the connection between violence against animals and violence against humans. Clearly it’s not a matter of cruelty to animals causing violence against human beings in a straightforward way. Rather, as Linzey says, “cruelty Read more
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Caleb Stegall reviews Bill McKibbon’s Deep Economy (which I still haven’t read) in a recent issue of The American Conservative. In the course of the review he mentions this great exchange between economists Wilhelm Roepke and Ludwig von Mises: In 1947, two titans of 20th-century economic theory, Ludwig von Mises and Wilhelm Röpke, met in Read more
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“Eco-economist” Herman Daly tries to inject some clarity into the debate on climate change. Even if some of the details are up in the air, he says, the trajectory is clear and we need to ask if this is the direction we want to be going in. It seems to me that a lot of Read more
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Marvin has a terrific post on same-sex marriage in the church, pointing out the silliness of some of the slippery slope arguments (Next it’ll be group marriages! Marriage to animals!) made against churches blessing these relationships. Far from being part of some hedonistic collapse in moral standards, the movement for recognition of gay relationships is Read more
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The fact that some people’s idea of utopia involves “uploading” your personality into a computer and living forever frankly gives me the creeps. (I also am not sure it’s even a coherent idea. In what sense would that be me rather than just a Max Headroom-style copy of me?) I have no idea how many Read more
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Apropos of yesterday’s post, the lyrics from The Kinks’ “God’s Children”: Man made the buildings that reach for the sky And man made the motorcar and learned how to fly But he didn’t make the flowers and he didn’t make the trees And he didn’t make you and he didn’t make me And he got Read more
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This article at The Nation makes the case that even progressives who take the ultra anti-restrictionist line on abortion should support regulation of new reproductive technologies. These technologies have the potential for very serious unintended social consequences and therefore shouldn’t be left solely to individual choice. This seems like a place where progressives and cultural Read more
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A couple of weeks ago the New York Times ran a story on the new “green consumerism.” Today George Monbiot writes that it’s not good enough to “buy green”; we have to buy less. His contention is that “green” consumption is at this point a supplement to rather than a replacement of conventional consumption and Read more
A Thinking Reed 