A Thinking Reed

  • Forever war

    Michael Brendan Dougherty has a smart article in the new issue of The American Conservative about the post-election “whither conservatism” talk that has been roiling the Right. The one thing that doesn’t seem to be receiving much of the ballyhooed conservative re-thinking, Dougherty points out, is the Iraq war, and foreign policy more generally.

  • Ricky Nelson, Dino, and the Duke

    The great Howard Hawks/John Wayne western Rio Bravo wasn’t just an excuse to pair Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, but it didn’t hurt: I’m watching this tonight and just felt like posting these.

  • The heavens declare the glory of the Lord

    How cool is this–Hubble Telescope “Advent calendar” (Thanks, bls!)

  • Mill, liberal perfectionism, and religion

    As a tangential follow-up to this post, the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a petty exhaustive discussion of J.S. Mill’s moral and political philosophy here. Specifically, here’s a discussion of the relationship between Mill’s utilitarianism and his liberalism; here’s a comparison between Mill’s liberalism and other variants, such as Rawls’s. The emphasis here on…

  • A thought on doubt

    I was thinking a bit more about the discussion of doubt at Camassia’s and Hugo’s places, and this occurred to me: It might be helpful to remember that (in most cases at least) doubt is neither a vice nor a virtue. I.e. in most cases we’re not to be blamed (or praised) for doubting, because…

  • Friday metal – Unearth, “My Will Be Done”

  • Assorted links with no particular unifying theme

    –Lynn on why some people are pro-choice on abortion but anti-gay marriage and the various meanings of “sodomy” –Matt Yglesias on DC Statehood (bonus: a couple of nifty images of US flags with 51 stars from Yglesias commenters) –Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle recently appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show, an excellent program on DC’s…

  • Carter on Singer

    Joe Carter is, I think, too hard on Peter Singer in this post. Singer is wrong about a lot of stuff–his views on disability and on bioethics in particular. But as much as anyone he deserves credit for bringing the abuses of animals in factory farms to public attention, not to mention his work on…

  • Mill, animals, and liberalism

    Gaius asks whether a liberal who traces her intellectual lineage to J.S. Mill–i.e. who sees the purpose of politics as permitting the widest possible scope for human liberty consistent with the liberty of others–can consistently be in favor of laws for preventing cruelty to animals or protecting the environment: how [did] liberals, historically, either politically…

  • Moyers on “Changing the way we eat”

    Bill Moyers interviews Michael Pollan about food policy, public health, climate change, and what, if anything, Barack Obama can, should, or might do to reform our food system.