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Fowl play
Speaking of chickens, this review of a new book about the treatment of chickens under the conditions of industrial farming utterly fails to engage with the moral issue at hand. The author, Mick Hume, seems to think that factory farming is a mark of progress and anyone who questions whether the end (cheap meat) justifies…
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A veggie Fourth
Grist has a good article offering suggestions for meat-free twists on summer classics. Parenthetically, it’s interesting how people who curtail their meat consumption for environmental reasons differ in their approach from those who are primarily concerned about animal welfare. Not that the two positions are mutually exclusive, mind you. But enviros, I’ve noticed, tend to…
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Peak oil and the end of liberalism
Patrick Deneen writes that modern liberalism – “the philosophy premised upon a belief in individual autonomy, one that rejected the centrality of culture and tradition, that eschewed the goal or aim of cultivation toward the good established by dint of (human) nature itself, that regarded all groups and communities as arbitrarily formed and therefore alterable…
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Globalization from above
This interesting piece by NYU economist William Easterly calls bs on the “Ideology of Development” – the notion that all nations can become “developed” by instituting reforms orchestrated by elite technicians and experts from the IMF-World Bank-UN axis. Easterly points out that 1) the countries that have most closely followed the advice of the experts…
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The Conservative Mind 2.0
The American Scene, formerly run by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salm, has a spiffy new design with a whole new raft of contributors. Looks like a great one-stop shop for smart, heterodox conservative blogging. (Salam continues to run TAS, while Douthat has moved on to a solo blog at The Atlantic.)
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Who is my neighbor?
*Christopher has posted the text of a talk he recently gave on Christianity and the environment. It’s terrific stuff, with a very Lutheran and Benedictine flavor. I think that rooting our ethics (including our environmental ethics) in our response to what God has first done for us is exactly right and it’s one of the…
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More troops=more war
This is a few days old but still worth noting. Andrew Bacevich laments the bipartisan consensus among all the leading presidential candidates for expanding the size of the military. The problem, Bacevich says, is that “[a]ny politician who thinks that the chief lesson to be drawn from the last five years is that we need…
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The Humane Society vs. the farm bill
The Humane Society is opposing section 123 of the proposed 2007 Farm Bill which is supposed to be voted on by the House very soon. The section says that: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no State or locality shall make any law prohibiting the use in commerce of an article that the Secretary of…
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Fraser: against centralization
Giles Fraser writes (perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek?) about his recent “turn to the Right”: Over the past few months, I have had something of a conversion to the Right. I no longer believe that the Left is capable of delivering on its progressive promises. I no longer trust the Left to sustain an inclusive vision of…
