Social justice
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–Iowa’s House approved a bill to make it illegal to film the goings on in factory farms; it still has to pass the Senate. –The great Midwestern backlash. –What is the difference between liberals and libertarians? –Rejecting death-centered Christianity. –The fondness some secular liberals have for fundamentalism. –More than half of Americans now favor legal Read more
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Somewhat abbreviated… –Here’s the Red Cross disaster newsroom page for donations and updates on today’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan. –How climate change can lead to increases in earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity. –The Christian Century responds to B.R. Myers’ anti-foodie polemic, drawing some useful distinctions. –A study finds that chickens are capable of empathy. Read more
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–Why Washington doesn’t care about jobs. –At the Moral Mindfield, Marilyn has more on the question of whether welfare reforms benefit animals raised for food. –Metallica’s classic album Master of Puppets turned 25(!) yesterday. This was the first real metal album I ever heard, and it’s still one of the best. –NPR’s “First Listen” is Read more
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Since I’m reading his book, I’ve been reading up a little on Howard Zinn (who died last year). This is from Bob Herbert’s column right after Zinn’s death: I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice Read more
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–Why unions are essential for the future of liberalism. –Maryland is very close to legalizing same-sex marriage. –Indiana is very close to passing a draconian, Arizona-style immigration law. –International aid groups appeal to Congress to restore funding for humanitarian aid. –A slideshow and discussion on the question “Is meat green?” –How much would a government Read more
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I highly recommend this Kevin Drum article from the latest issue of Mother Jones on the decline of unions and what it means for the prospects of liberalism in the U.S. Drum points out that organized labor’s waning influence coincided with skyrocketing economic inequality and contends that this has important lessons for liberalism’s long-term efforts Read more
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I mentioned a while back that I was reading Martha Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice. To re-cap briefly: Nussbaum criticizes social contract theories of justice for their inability to deal with three cases: duties to the disabled, to foreigners, and to nonhuman animals. As a supplement (or replacement–it’s not entirely clear to me), she recommends her Read more
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This article from Alternet on 12 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in Wisconsin is chock-full of good information, but I’d like to focus in is this bit at the end, which gets at a key issue: The Right has made great political progress getting Americans to ask the question: “How come that Read more
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–The Australian broadcaster ABC’s Religion and Ethics site has a series of articles by Martha Nussbaum on democracy and education: parts 1, 2, and 3. –Coal is not cheap. –Vegan nutritionist Virginia Messina argues that healthy diets can include meat analogues. (A corrective of sorts to anti-processed-food extremism.) –At the great metal blog Invisible Oranges: Read more
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At a time when it feels like the middle- and working-classes are increasingly under siege, the story of public employees standing up for their collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin (and now Ohio!) is one of the more inspiring things I’ve seen lately on the American political scene. Maybe the example of recent events in the Read more
A Thinking Reed 