I have long been captivated by the ongoing debates around Darwinian evolution, and two books I read this spring have validated some of my previously held views as well as opened new areas of thought for me. Mind and Cosmos, by Thomas Nagel, is a relatively brief book that explores the deficiencies in the […]
Archives for June 2013
From the Bush Doctrine to What?
I often said during the George W. Bush administration that whoever succeeded him would be hard pressed to find a better strategy for the defeat of radical Muslim jihadism than the Bush Doctrine. And, in fact, President Obama has used significant elements of it to great advantage during his term, without directly crediting its […]
Has Democracy Had Its Day?
Our purpose is to cultivate in the largest possible number of our future citizens an appreciation of both the responsibilities and the benefits which come to them because they are American and they are free.—Harvard University President James Bryant Conant in the preface to the 1945 report, General Education in a Free Society. Concerns […]
The Ultimate Tyranny
The power to tax involves the power to destroy.—Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, McCullough vs. Maryland, 1819. In the act of appropriating taxes there is perhaps no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice.—James Madison, Federalist No. 10 Of […]
A Tale of Two Disasters
In viewing the reporting of the response to and recovery from the devastation wreaked by the tornadoes in Oklahoma, I have been struck by the contrast in the local response to this disaster with that of the 2005 Katrina hurricane and flood in New Orleans. Where is the massive evacuation of refugees, the housing […]