Feed on
Posts

Tag Archive 'Conservatives'

The Person I Haven’t Found

Posted in Ethics, politics on May 30th, 2008

I’ve never met anyone with a balanced view of Israel. I’m not even that person. I listen to progressives for a while and I’m convinced Israel is an evil aggressor. I listen to my fellow conservatives for a while and I’m convinced Israel is an innocent victim.
We conservatives find it easy to understand why Israelis [...]

Read Full Post »

McCain Should Pick a Dem VP

Posted in Culture, politics on May 24th, 2008

Jonah Goldberg is right: McCain should pick a Democrat (or ex-Dem like Lieberman) as his VP.
Evidently Goldberg’s article didn’t make Rush too happy. But Rush himself was making the same kind of argument before he came up with Operation Chaos. If you’ll remember, I wrote a little article on the subject in early March:
. . [...]

Read Full Post »

Patriotism or Philopatria?

Posted in Culture, Philosophy, politics on Apr 16th, 2008

I have a new article up at The Free Liberal. You can read it here.

Read Full Post »

Locke Is the Key to Political Debate

Posted in Culture, Philosophy, politics on Mar 25th, 2008

(Don’t you just love clever titles?)
Since I live in a politically-divided household and teach a politically-divided student body, I expend a lot of energy trying to discover the fundamental assumptions made on both sides (and how those assumptions are connected). I’ve found John Locke to be particularly helpful here.
In his  Second Treatise of Civil Government, [...]

Read Full Post »

Clinton v. Obama: Republicans & Conservatives Win?

Posted in politics on Mar 6th, 2008

I’ve got a new article up at The Free Liberal. You can read it here.

Read Full Post »

“Capitalism” Is the Wrong Word

Posted in Economics, Philosophy, politics on Jan 6th, 2008

Recently I’ve heard both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity say one of the things Americans should be grateful for is “capitalism.” And I just ran across a blog post that shows they should pick a different word.
The post said that you should hire childcare so you can spend less time on raising your kids and [...]

Read Full Post »

My Thoughts on Romney’s Religion Speech

Posted in Ethics, politics, religion on Dec 6th, 2007

(Text here.)
It’s as good as any politician’s speech on religion that I’ve ever heard, and is far better than most attempts by politicians to deal with religion.
It is evidence of the following fact:
Politics is founded upon — and takes its ongoing motive force from — value judgments. Therefore, political theory and moral-/value-/ethical-theory are inseparable.
The question [...]

Read Full Post »

Diplomacy

Posted in Philosophy, politics on Dec 4th, 2007

I was listening to Bill Richardson give a speech on C-SPAN Radio the other day. I was struck by two things:
(1) His emphasis on diplomacy, coupled with his insistence that he always gets what he wants thereby.
(2) His claim that America should stop being the world’s police-force and start being its conscience (I believe he [...]

Read Full Post »