A Thinking Reed

  • 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…

  • Can we ever get away from the sprawl?

    This is from a recent Arcade Fire performance on SNL. It’s “Sprawl II,” one of my favorite songs from their album The Suburbs (which just won the Grammy for best album). I know it’s trendy to like these guys, but what can I say? It’s a good album. (Also–how many freakin’ members does this band…

  • Solidarity, not resentment

    This article from Alternet on 12 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in Wisconsin is chock-full of good information, but I’d like to focus in is this bit at the end, which gets at a key issue: The Right has made great political progress getting Americans to ask the question: “How come that…

  • Friday links

    –The Australian broadcaster ABC’s Religion and Ethics site has a series of articles by Martha Nussbaum on democracy and education: parts 1, 2, and 3. –Coal is not cheap. –Vegan nutritionist Virginia Messina argues that healthy diets can include meat analogues. (A corrective of sorts to anti-processed-food extremism.) –At the great metal blog Invisible Oranges:…

  • Friday Metal: Conducting from the Grave, “Unholiest of Nightmares”

  • Look for the union label

    At a time when it feels like the middle- and working-classes are increasingly under siege, the story of public employees standing up for their collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin (and now Ohio!) is one of the more inspiring things I’ve seen lately on the American political scene. Maybe the example of recent events in the…

  • Nussbaum on problems with social contract theories

    I’m reading Martha Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice, which is an expanded version of her 2003 Tanner Lectures. In it, Nussbaum develops and applies her “capability approach” to social and political justice in three areas that traditional moral theories have often ignored: duties toward the disabled, foreigners, and nonhuman animals. A major part of Nussbaum’s project…

  • The millionaire as savior

    Sweet mercy, this is atrocious and offensive. (Via Adam Kotsko, who has an interesting theological analysis.)