More from the "anti-anti-torture" camp

I fully agree with John Cole: this is an outrage. Some in the “anti-anti-torture” contingent are using the fact that John McCain broke under torture when held captive by the North Vietnamese to rebut McCain’s own anti-torture argument — ostensibly as a demonstration that “torture works,” but also, I suspect, to subtly impugn the Senator’s [...]

Retribution and "just deserts"

In a comment on my post about retribution and morality (in response to his own earlier post), Mark Kleiman draws a distinction between “retribution” and “just deserts”:
“Just deserts” is offender-focused: What ought this person to suffer? The extreme version of this is Kant’s, who says that the offender is owed punishment and that it would [...]

God(dess) forbid, we should consider ourselves more enlightened when it comes to women’s rights…

Sunday’s New York Times ran a wrenching front-page story on child brides in Africa — girls as young as ten given, or rather sold, in marriage to men who are decades older (often as second wives). The main focus of the article is a story with a sort-of happy ending: 12-year-old Mwaka Simbeye, whom [...]

Hurricane Katrina and the media (old and new)

At Reason, Matt Welch spanks the media for spreading hysterical rumors about the chaos in New Orleans after the city was struck by Hurricane Katrina. Armed thugs shooting at rescue helicopters, rampant gang violence, murder and rape inside the Superdome and the Convention Center where people took refuge from the flood — respected news organization [...]

Same-sex marriage in the Netherlands: parsing the stats

On Friday, Andrew Sullivan posted this brief item on his blog:
There’s a big jump in the number of same-sex married couples in Holland, as the reform begins to change gay culture and social expectations.
Here’s what the linked article, at the Dutch English-language website Expatica, actually says:
The number of gay couples in the Netherlands has [...]

Retribution, morality, and the soul

One of my favorite left-of-center bloggers, Mark Kleiman, has an excellent post on one of my favorite topics: the value of retribution as an aspect of punishment, and the fact that “retribution not be dismissed as somehow “primitive” and unworthy of serious consideration.” The occasion is the arrest of 90-year-old former dictator Augusto Pinochet on [...]

Darwin and religion

Ever since I wrote in my Boston Globe column, “Fact and Fiction on Evolution,” that (contrary to assertions that Darwinism is a vehicle for atheism and materialism) Charles Darwin himself was a Christian, a number of people have written to me to point out that while Darwin started out as a Christian and even trained [...]

Academic freedom, extremism, and whose ox is being gored

There’s a to-do at Warren Community College in New Jersey over an email sent to a student by adjunct instructor (now ex-adjunct instructor) John Daly to a student earlier this month.
Rebecca Beach, a Warren student and the head of the campus chapter of Young America’s Foundation, sent out an email to the faculty about an [...]

If it looks like anti-religious bias…

At times I’ve been harshly critical of overwrought claims of anti-religious bias over things like the “war on Christmas,” or critcism directed at a student body president who used his speech at convocation for blatant proselytizing. But does a real bias against religion, particularly religions of the traditional type, exist in the academy? [...]

Paul Berman on French anti-Americanism and more

The latest New Republic has a fascinating article by Paul Berman on French anti-Americanism (free registration required). The essay, which includes reviews of several books dealing with the topics, is an in-depth overview of the complex history of French attitudes toward America, and includes such truly fascinating tidbits. For instance, one of the authors he [...]