A Thinking Reed

  • Happy birthday, America

    Just a short re-cap: All men (heck, let’s say “people”) – created equal Those people – they’ve got rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness And the government? Its job is to protect those rights The government ultimately answers to the people Judging by the way our leaders act, and what we go…

  • What kind of equality?

    Following up a bit on this post, in his book Morals, Reason, and Animals, philosopher S.F. Sapontzis has a helpfully clear discussion of just what animal liberationists are and are not claiming when they talk about “equal rights” for animals. First, animal liberationists do not claim that animals do, or should, have all the same…

  • CofE RIP?

    Though I often think of myself as a closeted Episcopalian, I don’t usually comment on Anglican matters. But I thought this piece from the always-interesting Theo Hobson was worth pointing out. Hobson argues that, in trying to hold the Anglican Communion together come hell or high water, Rowan Williams has unwittingly doomed the Church of…

  • The green revolution that wasn’t

    The libertarian-liberal quasi fusionist blog The Art of the Possible is rapidly becoming a must-read. And I’m not just saying that because my favorite libertarian blogger Jim Henley linked to one of my posts there. Maybe it’s also because of my own warring inner liberal and libertarian. Case in point: where else would you find…

  • Put not your trust in princes, the continuing series…

    Andrew Bacevich writes that we need a wholesale repudiation of the Bush legacy in foreign policy – preventive war, “enhanced” interrogation, the metastasizing national security state, the black hole version of the executive that draws all power to itself, etc. McCain, with minor modifications, represents a continuation of the Bush legacy. It falls, then, to…

  • Of great apes and red herrings

    William Saletan reports on a movement afoot in Spain to grant “basic rights” to great apes – a group that includes chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. A resolution approved by a Spanish parliamentary committe would “commit the government to ending involuntary use of apes in circuses, TV ads, and dangerous experiments.” The resolution is based on…

  • Stimulate me, baby

    I picked up the June issue of Harper’s before a train trip a few weeks ago because of the its interesting-looking cover story on the strife in the Episcopal Church. But only last night, as was I catching up on the rest of the issue, did I come across Jonathan Rowe’s “Our Phony Economy,” which…

  • An ethic of sustainable use

    I got an e-mail with a link to this interview with Michael Pollan (You too can subscribe to the Michael Pollan e-mail list!) at this new site sponsored by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Three points stood out for me. One, the primary distinction between food systems is fossil fuel-based vs. solar…

  • June reading notes

    In lieu of full-on book blogging, here are capsule reviews of some books I’ve read over the past month or so: A Moral Climate, Michael Northcott A theological ethicist and priest of the Episcopal Church of Scotland on climate change. Well-informed by the science (as far as I can judge), but also provides a specifically…

  • The crunchy libertarian

    While we’re on the subject of food, I’m very much looking forward to John Schwenkler‘s upcoming article on “culinary conservatism” for the American Conservative, which he mentions here. In the same post, John makes the case for what I think it’s fair to call a libertarian approach to food production, the idea being that our…