An Argument Worth Having: “Outgrowing God” by Richard Dawkins
The Battle for Truth and Reason “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” you might cry, “Richard Dawkins is banging on about God again! Hasn’t he already been there and done that? Why…
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Free Will, the Libet Experiments and the War on Terror
On 10 September 2019, a headline in the Atlantic announced, “A Famous Argument Against Free Will Has Been Debunked.” The argument in question was based on the findings of what…
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What Social Justice Gets Right
Social Justice ideas and the postmodern thought that underlies them are extremely difficult to critique in a balanced way. This is largely caused by black-and-white thinking: many people wrongly believe…
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Why Antitrust Laws Reduce Competitiveness
It takes more entrepreneurs than lawyers to create and preserve competition and tech giants are in the eye of a hurricane. According to the Wall Street Journal, both the Federal…
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Why the Joker Has Provoked a Backlash
On 4 October, an event transpired that, in some circles at least, seemed to provoke as much anxiety as the impending eruption of a volcano: a movie was released. The…
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Anti-Natalism: Moral Courage or Confusion?
I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out…
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The Future of Democracy in the AI Era
The dark forces of global politics—illiberalism, populist nationalism and protectionism—have recently reasserted themselves and threaten to subvert liberal democracy and the rules-based world order. These fundamental sociopolitical currents pose challenges…
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Mandatory National Service Won’t Restore American Unity
Politico Magazine recently launched “How to Fix Politics in America,” a blockbuster interactive feature exploring 99 “out-of-the-box solutions to America’s biggest problems.” The proposed solutions range from the interesting and creative…
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Schools Need to Teach Patriotism
Last year, I counted six different languages among the fourteen students in my classroom. One student had moved back to Wisconsin after spending most of his life in Mexico. One…
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Psychology’s Replication Crisis
Photo: Five Thirty Eight The science of the mind has never been exclusively objective—consider the Oedipus complex. The psychological theories of today are not nearly as blatant in their errors. However,…
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Go Back to Where You Came From!
No one is a native of the place we call home.—Mohsin Hamid, National Geographic, August 2019 Without interbreeding due to successive waves of migrants, “Europeans” would not exist.—Paul Salopek, National…
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Donald Trump Is a Liar, but He’s Not a Hypocrite
A liar says x is true when she knows x is false or vice versa. A hypocrite casts shame and expresses intense moral condemnation about people for engaging in behavior…
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Critical Theory from the Frankfurt School to Foucault
Critical Theory is a modern philosophical development that stems, in large part, from a group of twentieth-century philosophers affiliated with the Frankfurt School, who argued that the culture of Enlightenment,…
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How the Collectivist Right Won the Battle of Ideas
Left-wing critics of Trump and of the worldwide resurgence of the populist right have been throwing the word fascist around liberally in recent years. But many people have missed the…
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An Alternative Explanation for Male Violence
Dr Julia Shaw has published an article in Psychology Today, challenging the notion that men are naturally more violent than women. Disturbed by the fact that prisoners are overwhelmingly male,…
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Francis Fukuyama’s “Identity”: A Book Review
Francis Fukuyama is one of those authors who are often invoked and far less frequently read. This has to do, at least in part, with the controversy surrounding his first…
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Oligarchy, Immigration and Intersectionality: Contradictions on the Left
In his interview with Joe Rogan, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was asked where the lobbyists in Washington came from, and what could be done to stop them. Sanders told Rogan…
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A Wrong Against Boys: An Impossible Conversation about Circumcision
Inspired by a public conversation between a rabbi and a medical ethicist, in this article, I will take a strong stance against the practice of routine neonatal circumcision in the…
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