I wrote before, “Since war entails significant evil in the form of death and destruction, the good to be achieved has to outweigh this evil for the war to be considered morally licit.” Put more concretely, in addition to the 1000+ American lives that have been sacrificed for the current mission in Iraq, it is…

Here’s an interesting report on the failure to uncover mass graves in Kosovo, the war which, you’ll recall, was justified on the grounds of Serbian ethnic cleansing and impending genocide. According to the report: In alleged ethnic cleansing exercises by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, as many as 100,000 to 200,000 civilians were said to have…

Joe Carter at the Evangelical Outpost has a fascinating post about the recent intellectual development of philosopher Antony Flew. Flew has long been known as one of the fiercest critics of natural theology (especially during the heyday of the “falsification” debate). He now appears to be on the verge of accepting a version of the…

Should work make us happy? Or, more to the point, should it be the chief element in defining our sense of self and personal worth as it so often is in the contemporary world? Time to get more realistic about what work can deliver in terms of satisfaction, says philosopher Alain de Botton. He contrasts…

I should also note as an addendum to the post below, that Borders makes a move in his article that I’ve seen a lot of libertarians make, irrespective of their views on foreign policy. Oftentimes it is held (or implied) that since rights must be protected by concrete social and political institutions, rights are nothing…

Tech Central Station has an article this morning by a certain Max Borders on whether it is possible to be a libertarian on domestic issues and a “neo-conservative” (his term) on foreign policy. In short: can a libertarian be a hawk? Borders answers in the affirmative: The libertarian hawk takes her cues from Hobbes, not…

Jim Henley offers a justification (of sorts!) for minimal government in response to anarchist critiques: As a minarchist/constitutionalist, I’ll cop to inconsistency of principle. But while I agree with the anarcho-capitalists that All governments are gangs, I don’t think governments are the only gangs. It’s an observed fact that, wherever and whenever you go, armed…

(For earlier installments see here, here, and here.) In addition to being a revelation of God’s love and a sacrifice that effects reconciliation between humanity and God, Christians have always seen the Atonement as the act whereby God redeems us from the powers of sin and evil. In ancient times, redemption meant literally to purchase…

Yes, localized direct democracy is majoritarian, but the citizen unhappy with a law may appeal to her neighbors, who are often kin or lifelong friends. At the national level, however, she is just a single vote in a mass of anonymous millions—not even a brick in the wall. A Vermonter who dislikes his town’s junk-car…

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man. — Johnny Cash