A Thinking Reed

  • Friday Links

    –Why Washington doesn’t care about jobs. –At the Moral Mindfield, Marilyn has more on the question of whether welfare reforms benefit animals raised for food. –Metallica’s classic album Master of Puppets turned 25(!) yesterday. This was the first real metal album I ever heard, and it’s still one of the best. –NPR’s “First Listen” is…

  • Friday Metal: Machine Head, “Clenching the Fists of Dissent”

  • Universalism and the gospel

    “Although an earthly mother may possibly allow her child to perish, our heavenly Mother Jesus can never allow us who are his children to perish.” –Julian of Norwich I don’t know much about Rob Bell. It seems he’s kind of a big deal in the emerging/emergent church movement (or “conversation” as some folks prefer to…

  • What’s a radical?

    Since I’m reading his book, I’ve been reading up a little on Howard Zinn (who died last year). This is from Bob Herbert’s column right after Zinn’s death: I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice…

  • History with a preferential option for the poor

    I probably should’ve read this years ago, maybe as an angry 19-year-old (though, come to think of it, I wasn’t really that angry when I was 19), but I recently started Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. So far I’m pretty impressed: I was expecting a political harangue, but what Zinn’s doing…

  • Friday Links

    –Why unions are essential for the future of liberalism. –Maryland is very close to legalizing same-sex marriage. –Indiana is very close to passing a draconian, Arizona-style immigration law. –International aid groups appeal to Congress to restore funding for humanitarian aid. –A slideshow and discussion on the question “Is meat green?” –How much would a government…

  • Friday Metal: Soilwork, “Let This River Flow”

    From their most recent album The Panic Broadcast. This is pretty close to being a ballad by metal standards.

  • Vegetarians, vegans, and the varieties of reform

    Via Critical Animal, here’s an article looking at whether animal welfare reforms (e.g., banning battery cages or veal crates) reduce meat consumption. Some animal-rights activists, notably those associated with or sympathetic to Gary Francione’s “abolitionist” approach, have argued that such reforms only encourage people to eat more meat, because they make people feel better about…

  • The heart and soul of liberalism

    I highly recommend this Kevin Drum article from the latest issue of Mother Jones on the decline of unions and what it means for the prospects of liberalism in the U.S. Drum points out that organized labor’s waning influence coincided with skyrocketing economic inequality and contends that this has important lessons for liberalism’s long-term efforts…

  • Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to justice

    I mentioned a while back that I was reading Martha Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice. To re-cap briefly: Nussbaum criticizes social contract theories of justice for their inability to deal with three cases: duties to the disabled, to foreigners, and to nonhuman animals. As a supplement (or replacement–it’s not entirely clear to me), she recommends her…