If conservatives and libertarians disagree about ends, but agree (sometimes) about means, the reverse might be said of libertarians and liberals. To see why, consider that libertarians often trace their intellectual lineage to J.S. Mill’s “On Liberty.” For Mill, our proper ends are not given by religion or traditional morality. Rather, the proper end of…

Touchstone Magazine has recently put up an extensive archive of its articles going back to 1999. One of the gems I came across is a piece by Christopher Killheffer: “Our Food from God.” Killheffer writes: The industrial system of raising animals is not disordered because it kills chickens; it is disordered because it first, from…

Today at Tech Central Station, Kenneth Silber tries to rekindle the romance between conservatism and libertarianism, which one could say has been on the rocks of late. Disagreements about everything from stem-cell research to the Iraq war threaten to put the final nail in the coffin of “fusionism” – the ideological glue (developed most notably…

I know my day’s not complete without a dose of good and crunchy analytic philosophy of religion. The Maverick Philosopher is happy to oblige.

Nothing is more sure, than that as “the Lord is loving to every man,” so “his mercy is over all his works;” all that have sense, all that are capable of pleasure or pain, of happiness or misery. In consequence of this, “He openeth his hand, and filleth all things living with plenteousness. He prepareth…

Ramesh Ponuru has a piece at Tech Central Station debunking some misleading poll numbers on stem-cell research. “Who’s Afraid of Noam Chomsky?” A fair and balanced take on the self-styled American dissident from a “right-libertarian” perspective. Look out! It’s the “Antiwar, Anti-abortion, Pro-Jesus Party”!

John Harris offers us a vitriolic attack on religion in the LA Times today. His criticism seems to consist of two distinct components: a) Religious beliefs are false and/or irrational, and shouldn’t be treated as beyond rational criticism b) Religious beliefs lead people to engage in morally objectionable forms of political action(e.g. suicide bombing, opposing…

[C]owardice involves not only fear of danger to one’s life, but danger to one’s life objectives. The terrorist – disregarding all moral rules protecting innocents and exploiting the trust of others so his project cannot be defeated – is a coward. Cowardice implicates not just how one views one’s own life, but those of others.…

The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that…

An interesting idea from Paul Contino, a professor at Pepperdine University, writing in the LA Times: “We can do better. And help is on the way.” When I heard that refrain in Sen. John F. Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, it reminded me of why I am a Democrat at heart. In…