Because some people deserve it. If Osama bin Laden is captured, he deserves to be tortured before he is executed. A day of excruciating torture for each of the more than 3,000 victims on 9/11 would be getting off easy. Torture and execution as punishment for murder is not cruel. It is just. In fact, […]
My paper, “Past Longevity as Evidence for the Future,” appears in the new issue (Vol. 76, No. 1) of Philosophy of Science, a leading mainstream academic journal of philosophy. The abstract and acknowledgment—including my acknowledgment of the epistemology of Ayn Rand—are here, on the Web site of the University of Chicago Press. (Update, 6/29/2011: Read […]
On May 1, his 92nd day in office, the nation’s leader said this: And finally, we shall endeavor to take this year the first step on the way to an organic economic development, working on the fundamental principle that there can be no recovery which does not begin at the root of national economic life, […]
Yesterday evening, Obama held a press conference marking his first 100 days as President. But I want to comment on this statement he made yesterday morning at a Town Hall in Arnold, Missouri: We’re going to continue to help our schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. The notion of ‘closing achievement gaps’ has […]
Much has been written, in the past few weeks, on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s report entitled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” Some bloggers, including me, held off on writing about this news immediately because the report is so irrational that it seemed like a spoof […]
On the occasion of “Earth Day” (April 22), it is instructive to remind ourselves of the ideology underlying environmentalism. This post is from a page that has been on my Web site since September 2007. This is the third from the last paragraph of Al Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human […]
On April 15, I attended a TEA Party (Taxed Enough Already), one of the 300 such TEA Parties nationwide, in El Segundo (South Bay), California. There were many American flags, and many protesters carried signs that showed a far better understanding of American principles than is held by most of America’s politicians. Some of my […]
Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823: We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed than […]
Congratulations and thanks to the U.S. Navy and Capt. Richard Phillips for the successful rescue of Capt. Phillips and the killing and capture of the pirates. When dealing with evil, deadly force is the answer. If only our government had the principled, moral courage to unleash our awesome military might to destroy the pirates’ land […]
In a comment on my previous post (America’s Empty Foreign Policy: “What Our Enemies Must Understand is … ”) Burgess Laughlin of Making Progress raised interesting questions regarding “moral courage.” To my pleasant surprise, Wikipedia describes moral courage fairly well: “Physical courage” is courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, or threat of death, […]