A Thinking Reed

  • Christianity, patriotism, and divided loyalties

    Ben Myers posted this bombastic Stanley Hauerwas quote (is there any other kind?) for Independence Day: I assume most of you are here because you think you are Christians, but it is not all clear to me that the Christianity that has made you Christians is Christianity. For example: How many of you worship in…

  • Protecting basic constitutional liberties is not a boutique issue

    See Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Larison.

  • McKibben’s journey

    The Nation has a nice overview of Bill McKibben’s writing, focusing on some of the tensions and evolution in his thought. McKibben’s more recent writing (e.g. Deep Economy) has taken a turn away from the wilderness ethic and towards a focus on “durable communities” and responsible stewardship. Our technological prowess, it seems, will inevitably change…

  • More from Rowe

    A few days ago I wrote a post that took as its jumping-off point an article on the shortcomings of GDP by Jonathan Rowe in Harper‘s. I see here that Mr. Rowe has an entire archive of articles written from what I would describe as a generally decentralist green/left perspective that I find highly congenial.…

  • 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…