A Thinking Reed

  • 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.)

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Economics for community

    As I mentioned previously, Daly and Cobb’s central concern is that the abstractions of economics leave out aspects of reality that are crucial to understanding the world and shaping the economy in a way that nourishes community and is sustainable in the long run. Following A.N. Whitehead, they refer to the phenomenon of treating an…

  • Back

    We had big fun in Los Angeles. One of the highlights was our friends taking us to this Tiki bar on Sunset Blvd. to enjoy some fruity cocktails in an atmosphere redolent of the high tide of mid 20th-century Tiki culture. I enjoy LA in that “nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there”…

  • Checking in

    Still on vacation – currently staying with some friends outside of the City of Angels. Boy, the California livin’ seems easy when the sun’s shining and the breeze is blowing. A little warm for my blood, but there you are. Tomorrow we fly back to Boston and then have exactly one week to pack before…

  • Economics as if people (and other living things) mattered

    I’m in Indianapolis visiting family, and one of the things I like to do whenever I’m here is make a trip to Half Price Books. Yesterday I picked up a copy of For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future by World Bank economist Herman Daly and process…

  • Vacay

    I’m heading out of town to visit family and friends for the next week. Posting will be light but not necessarily non-existent. And since I may not get to it next week, here’s a bonus Friday Metal: Killswitch Engage – “The Arms of Sorrow”