A Thinking Reed

  • Debitage

    Via Lynn, I discovered a previously unknown (to me) blog, Debitage, that has a lot of interesting posts on the environment, philosophy, politics, religion, and other topics. Of particular interest to me, there are several good posts on animal rights, for instance: here and here.

  • Violence and hermeneutics

    Marvin reflects on the place of texts in the Bible that seem to implicate God in violence, with a little help from St. Augustine. I’m not sure God insists that we be pacifists; I’m even less sure that God is a pacifist (as Marvin acknowledges and Miroslav Volf argues). But there are still passages in…

  • Voting as Catholics (and other Christians)

    At Commonweal, William J. Gould advocates a plurality of approaches to voting among Catholics: The kind of pluralism I have in mind would range from radical perspectives such as that of the eminent Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre—who contends that the two major parties are so defective that not voting is actually preferable to voting—to support…

  • The blood of the martyrs

    The Nation (of all places) has a troubling article on the persecution of Christians in India, something Pope Benedict has drawn attention to recently (along with the plight of Christians in Iraq).

  • Atheist self-parody watch

    I know it’s an overused trope to say that “fundamentalist” atheists like Richard Dawkins are mirror images of the fundamentalist Christians they despise, but when Dawkins starts crusading against Harry Potter books it’s pretty hard to resist.

  • How I (sort of) joined the vast left-wing conspiracy: confessions of a pessimistic liberal

    In the wake of talk of a new conservative-libertarian fusionism on the right, these remarks from political theorist Jacob T. Levy make for interesting reading. I used to consider myself a libertarian, and even voted Republican in the late 90s and early oughts, but was soon driven away from the GOP for reasons to familiar…

  • Jeffersonia

    I don’t know how many ATR readers live in the DC area, but the Library of Congress currently has a very cool exhibit of Revolutionary-era documents, “Creating the United States,” which includes Jefferson’s “rough draft” of the Declaration of Independence, complete with handwritten edits from Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and members of the Continental Congress.…

  • Unhappy conservatives

    The American Conservative asked an eclectic group of thinkers on the Right (broadly speaking) to offer their endorsements for the election. Interestingly, by my count there are four Obama voters, two McCain voters, and twelve people who say they will either vote third party, write someone in, or not vote at all. This isn’t too…

  • Fear of a liberal planet

    Under some circumstances I might be sympathetic to the argument that handing both Congress and the presidency to the same party is a bad idea. After all, our system of government is based on the principle of checks and balances, and one-party rule can lead to corruption and abuse of power in short order. But…

  • Prop 2 in the news

    The NYT and the Washington Post both have articles this weekend on the Proposition 2 campaign in California. The Times profiles Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society, who’s group has been spearheading the campaign. The Post article gives the lay of the land on both sides of the issue. I’m astonished by some of…