http://www.alliancealert.org news from the frontlines of the culture war Thu, 24 May 2012 23:12:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/08/09/government-natural-law-and-the-modern-state/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/08/09/government-natural-law-and-the-modern-state/#comments Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:28:37 +0000 ADF Alliance Alert http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=110384 Catholic Culture: Several of our readers have commented on the importance of governmental adherence to a law higher than itself. One of the grave problems in America and many other modern states is that the reigning philosophies of jurisprudence are rooted in positivism, or the idea that right and wrong, particularly in the realm of law, are simply what we say they are. Thus human law does not appear to be accountable to anything beyond itself. ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/08/09/government-natural-law-and-the-modern-state/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/07/26/philosophy-marriage-and-moral-grandstanding/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/07/26/philosophy-marriage-and-moral-grandstanding/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:15:08 +0000 ADF Alliance Alert http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=109104 Public Discourse: In a discipline whose point is dispassionate reasoning and discourse, some would shut down debate and silence dissenters on a deep and complex moral-political issue. And the view they would anathematize, far from irrational, is more coherent and more compelling than their slippery and ill-defined ‘default’. ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/07/26/philosophy-marriage-and-moral-grandstanding/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/04/01/the-puzzle-of-intolerant-tolerance/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/04/01/the-puzzle-of-intolerant-tolerance/#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:47:58 +0000 ADF Alliance Alert http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=99876 MercatorNet: "One of the most puzzling features of contemporary Western society is that governments are prepared to act intolerantly in the name of tolerance. Australian sociologist Michael Casey explains how this has come about." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/04/01/the-puzzle-of-intolerant-tolerance/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/12/does-marriage-or-anything-have-essential-properties/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/12/does-marriage-or-anything-have-essential-properties/#comments Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:26:00 +0000 ADF Alliance Alert http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=90904 ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/12/does-marriage-or-anything-have-essential-properties/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/10/book-review-the-fetal-position-a-rational-approach-to-the-abortion-issue/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/10/book-review-the-fetal-position-a-rational-approach-to-the-abortion-issue/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:00:42 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=90640 At Public Discourse, Christopher Kaczor reviews The Fetal Position: A Rational Approach to the Abortion Issue by Chris Meyers: "Unfortunately, The Fetal Position fails in its stated goal because it caricatures the most common defenses of the pro-life view. Rather than address the philosophical arguments that all human beings prior to birth should be protected by law and welcomed in life, Meyers misconstrues the mainstream pro-life position as if it were based on a theological belief in the soul." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/10/book-review-the-fetal-position-a-rational-approach-to-the-abortion-issue/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/04/don-marquis-and-michael-tooley-discuss-abortion-on-philosophy-tv/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/04/don-marquis-and-michael-tooley-discuss-abortion-on-philosophy-tv/#comments Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:10:53 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=89508 Philosophy TV: "According to Tooley, abortion is morally permissible: a fetus is not a person, so it cannot have a right to continued existence. To support his view, he defends a neo-Lockean account of personhood grounded in psychological continuity. Against Tooley, Marquis defends an animalistic view of personhood, and argues that most instances of abortion are wrong for the same reason that killing you or me would be wrong: an abortion deprives a fetus of a future of value." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/04/don-marquis-and-michael-tooley-discuss-abortion-on-philosophy-tv/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/03/marriage-no-avoiding-the-central-question/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/03/marriage-no-avoiding-the-central-question/#comments Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:31:52 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=89242 ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2011/01/03/marriage-no-avoiding-the-central-question/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/22/prof-kenji-yoshino-at-slate-my-response-to-robert-p-georges-second-attempt-to-justify-banning-gay-marriage/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/22/prof-kenji-yoshino-at-slate-my-response-to-robert-p-georges-second-attempt-to-justify-banning-gay-marriage/#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:28:53 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=88322 writing at Slate: "[T]hose who have propounded trans-historical, much less eternal, definitions of marriage have often been time's fools. Fifty years from now, I expect new challenges will be made to the definition of marriage. Yes, such challenges could take the form of challenges to recognize polygamous marriages (in fact, such challenges would not be new, as they were made on grounds of the free exercise of religion in the 19th century) . . .  I refuse to answer the question 'What is marriage?' by saying 'Marriage is one thing, always and everywhere, for all people.' I regard that refusal as a strength, rather than as a weakness, of my position, as I do not think we stand at the end of history today." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/22/prof-kenji-yoshino-at-slate-my-response-to-robert-p-georges-second-attempt-to-justify-banning-gay-marriage/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/15/theodore-dalrymple-the-pope-vs-the-failed-materialists/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/15/theodore-dalrymple-the-pope-vs-the-failed-materialists/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:09:27 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=86749 writing in The Salisbury Review: "There are few human types less attractive, surely, than failed materialists, which is what the British, or at least so many of them, now are. They consume without discrimination what they have not earned . . . Benedict's 'crime,' apart from being German, goes much further than his failure (or worse his refusal) to screen out the unpleasant consequences of consumerist materialism from his vision . . . In other words, Benedict XVI presents not a challenge to this or that piece of social policy, but to a whole Weltanschauung. And hell hath no fury like a questionable Weltanschauung questioned." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/15/theodore-dalrymple-the-pope-vs-the-failed-materialists/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/14/americas-epicurean-liberalism/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/14/americas-epicurean-liberalism/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:05:00 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=86545 ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/14/americas-epicurean-liberalism/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/13/samuel-gregg-socialism-and-solidarity-it-is-at-our-own-peril-that-we-ignore-the-nexus-between-moral-convictions-the-institutions-in-which-they-are-realized-and-our-economic-culture/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/13/samuel-gregg-socialism-and-solidarity-it-is-at-our-own-peril-that-we-ignore-the-nexus-between-moral-convictions-the-institutions-in-which-they-are-realized-and-our-economic-culture/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:31:39 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=86098 writing at The Public Discourse: "[W]hile moral beliefs have an important impact upon economic life, the manner in which they are given institutional expression also matters. This is illustrated by the different ways in which people’s responsibilities to those in need—what might be called the good of solidarity—are given political and economic form . . . [I]t is widely assumed throughout Western Europe that this moral responsibility should be primarily articulated through state action . . . Though Americans tended, Tocqueville noted, to dress up their assistance to others in the language of enlightened self-interest, he observed that Americans usually expressed the value of helping those in need through the habits and institutions of free and voluntary association." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/13/samuel-gregg-socialism-and-solidarity-it-is-at-our-own-peril-that-we-ignore-the-nexus-between-moral-convictions-the-institutions-in-which-they-are-realized-and-our-economic-culture/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/10/william-carroll-the-problem-with-reductionist-accounts-of-life/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/10/william-carroll-the-problem-with-reductionist-accounts-of-life/#comments Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:09:14 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=85904 writing at The Public Discourse: "Many biologists who insist that living things are nothing more than the sum of their physical components conclude that a question such as 'what is life?' is at the very least not a biological question, and probably is best rejected as a question without content. So we hear that one ought to resist using the term 'life' to describe what is just a highly sophisticated movement of matter. In an important sense, according to such a view, 'life,' as something other than matter in motion, does not exist. For those scientists and philosophers who embrace some form of materialism there is a strict disjunction: either we explain the living in terms of material, mechanically operating constituents, or in terms of some mysterious spiritual substance, some vital force. There is no substitute to materialism but magic." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/10/william-carroll-the-problem-with-reductionist-accounts-of-life/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/02/peter-wehner-the-soul-of-the-state/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/02/peter-wehner-the-soul-of-the-state/#comments Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:07:58 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=84579 writing at The Christian Science Monitor: "Christian values are not fundamentally at odds with government. There's room for debate and constructive criticism, but not an all-out attack on government's legitimacy. Instead, Christians should consider the role of the state within the framework of their guiding principles." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/12/02/peter-wehner-the-soul-of-the-state/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/17/peter-lawler-locke-and-todays-judicial-activism-on-marriage/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/17/peter-lawler-locke-and-todays-judicial-activism-on-marriage/#comments Wed, 17 Nov 2010 22:01:13 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=82750 writing at First Things / Postmodern Conservative: "Marriage has become, we can say, individualized or Lockeanized enough that homosexuals can reasonably wonder why they are being excluded . . . What's new is the rights-based tendency to stigmatize those opposed to same-sex marriage as unjust, as deniers of the self-evident truths that bind us all together . . . Our Court now affirms what might be called Locke's 'nominalism.' Words are weapons to be used to maximize individual liberty." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/17/peter-lawler-locke-and-todays-judicial-activism-on-marriage/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/16/the-limits-of-the-american-founding-what-our-poitical-fathers-didnt-teach-us/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/16/the-limits-of-the-american-founding-what-our-poitical-fathers-didnt-teach-us/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:10:05 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=82381 writing at The Family in America: "That our principles are primarily Lockean is not all good or all bad, but it is a problem that should receive scrutiny from conservatives in a friendly and loyal but nonetheless real criticism of the Founders as theorists . . . The embedded family of Western civilization, however, was clearly under assault by Locke. Consequently, a defense of the family, the church, and the local community in our time has to be in opposition to the application of his principles in every area of life. More than anything else, Americans cannot turn to Locke or even Jefferson to learn why the family and religion are good for their own sakes as the core of who we are; we cannot learn from them the whole truth about who we are as social and relational persons created in the image of God." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/16/the-limits-of-the-american-founding-what-our-poitical-fathers-didnt-teach-us/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/09/charles-taylor-the-meaning-of-secularism/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/09/charles-taylor-the-meaning-of-secularism/#comments Tue, 09 Nov 2010 19:14:26 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=81210 The Meaning of Secularism Charles Taylor, The Hedgehog Review 12.3 (Fall 2010) "One of our basic difficulties in dealing with these problems is that we have the wrong model, which has a continuing hold on our minds. We think that secularism (or laïcité) has to do with the relation of the state and religion, whereas in fact it has to do with the (correct) response of the democratic state to diversity. If we look at the three goals above, they have in common that they are concerned with protecting people in their belonging and/or practice of whatever outlook they choose or find themselves in; treating people equally whatever their option; and giving them all a hearing. There is no reason to single out religious (as against nonreligious), 'secular' (in another widely used sense), or atheist viewpoints. Indeed, the point of state neutrality is precisely to avoid favoring or disfavoring not just religious positions, but any basic position, religious or nonreligious. We can’t favor Christianity over Islam, but also we can’t favor religion over against nonbelief in religion, or vice versa." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/09/charles-taylor-the-meaning-of-secularism/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/02/stanley-fish-religion-and-the-liberal-state-once-again/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/02/stanley-fish-religion-and-the-liberal-state-once-again/#comments Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:18:09 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=79741 writing at The New York Times / Opinionator: "Liberalism is the name of an enlightenment theory of government characterized by an emphasis on procedural rather than substantive rights: the law protects individual free choice and is not skewed in the direction of some choices or biased against others; the laws framed by the liberal state are, or should be, neutral between competing visions of the good and the good life . . . The key distinction underlying classical liberalism is the distinction between the private and the public. This distinction allows the sphere of political deliberation to be insulated from the intractable oppositions that immediately surface when religious viewpoints are put on the table. Liberalism tells us that religious viewpoints should be confined to the home, the heart, the place of worship and the personal relationship between oneself and one’s God." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/02/stanley-fish-religion-and-the-liberal-state-once-again/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/01/insignificant-is-beautiful/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/01/insignificant-is-beautiful/#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:04:08 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=79594 writing at Christianity Today: "Generation Y is into social justice — so say generation gurus . . . That Generation Y cares about social justice is linked to another aspiration: the yearning for significance. This generation wants to make a difference in the world, to work on things that matter, engage activities that change the world. Again, this is hype, since people in every era want this. But it is nonetheless something to celebrate whenever we find it. But before we break out the champagne, we are wise to consider the seamier sides of this aspiration. First, the yearning for significance can be nothing more than ego masked as altruism . . . Second, the search for significance, especially if it requires changing the world, can blind us to the everyday tasks, the mundane duties, and the dirty work that is part and parcel of the life of discipleship." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/11/01/insignificant-is-beautiful/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/10/21/law-review-what-pragmatism-means-by-public-reason/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/10/21/law-review-what-pragmatism-means-by-public-reason/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:29:18 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=77810 What Pragmatism Means by Public Reason (October 19, 2010). Ethics & Politics, Vol. XII, No. 1, pp. 28−51, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1694494 "In this article I examine the main conceptions of public reason in contemporary political philosophy (Rawls, Habermas, critical theory) in order to set the frame for appreciating the novelty of the pragmatist understanding of public reason as based upon the notion of consequences and upon a theory of rationality as inquiry. The approach is inspired by Dewey but is free from any concern with history of philosophy. The aim is to propose a different understanding of the nature of public reason aimed at overcoming the limitations of the existing approaches. Public reason is presented as the proper basis for discussing contested issues in the broad frame of deep democracy." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/10/21/law-review-what-pragmatism-means-by-public-reason/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/10/20/john-finnis-the-other-f-word/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/10/20/john-finnis-the-other-f-word/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:52:19 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=77425 The Other F-Word." The Public Discourse editors summarize: "In an article adapted from his debate last week with Peter Singer and Maggie Little on the moral status of the 'fetus,' Professor Finnis explains that outside of medical contexts use of the word 'fetus' is offensive, dehumanizing, prejudicial, and manipulative. It obscures our perception of moral reality. Moral status is not a matter of choice or grant or convention, but of recognition, of someone who matters, and matters as an equal, whether we like it or not." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/10/20/john-finnis-the-other-f-word/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/09/27/wsj-book-review-what-ever-happened-to-modernism/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/09/27/wsj-book-review-what-ever-happened-to-modernism/#comments Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:54:33 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=73792 Eric Ormsby reviews What Ever Happened to Modernism? by Gabriel Josipovici in The Wall Street Journal: "Modernism is a kind of anguished repudiation—'a response to the simplifications of the self and of life that Protestantism and the Enlightenment brought with them.' Its intimacy lies in the stubborn effort, especially on the part of Modernist novelists, to render those little hesitations, those sieges of doubt, those anxious questionings that beset us even as we attempt to construct some credible narrative of our lives. The true Modernist narrative always involves a disrupted momentum . . . The origins of Modernism lie in disillusion or, more precisely, in what the German poet Friedrich Schiller called 'the disenchantment of the world' . . . In the mid-16th century, the old certainties, the immemorial rituals, the hierarchies of the heavens and earth seemed to crumble. As Mr. Josipovici explains, Schiller's phrase was taken up early in the 20th century by the sociologist Max Weber, who used it to explain the radical transformation of the world that occurred after the Protestant Reformation, from a divinely appointed cosmos, alive with numinous presences, to a bustling marketplace of enterprise, production and rampant individualism." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/09/27/wsj-book-review-what-ever-happened-to-modernism/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/09/09/e-christian-brugger-more-on-marriage-and-contraception/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/09/09/e-christian-brugger-more-on-marriage-and-contraception/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:53:07 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=71658 writing at the Culture of Life Foundation: "To be consummative (i.e., to be an act by which the spouses become one flesh), intercourse must be 'marital.' To be marital, it must be performed 'in a human way' and must be 'in itself suitable for the procreation of children' . . . To be performed 'in a human way,' requires at a minimum that the performance is not contrary to human freedom . . . Those who contracept aim to render their act of intercourse non-procreative (i.e., unsuitable for the procreation of children). So they intend a non-marital and hence non-consummative act. It follows that should they conceive a child contrary to their intentions, they do so by means of a non-marital act. It is important to see that contraception as a moral act is not defined merely by some physical outcome. Rather, it is defined by what one intends as an end or a means." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/09/09/e-christian-brugger-more-on-marriage-and-contraception/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/05/the-prop-8-decision-and-the-dictatorship-of-liberalism/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/05/the-prop-8-decision-and-the-dictatorship-of-liberalism/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 21:28:42 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=67663 writing at What's Wrong With the World: What we’re seeing here is just one more application of the fraudulent principle of 'liberal neutrality,' by which the conceit that liberal policy is neutral between the moral and metaphysical views competing within a pluralistic society provides a smokescreen for the imposition of a substantive liberal moral worldview, on all citizens, by force. (Of course, liberals typically qualify their position by saying that their conception of justice only claims to be neutral between 'reasonable' competing moral and metaphysical views, but 'reasonable' always ends up meaning something like 'willing to submit to a liberal conception of justice.') . . . Pope Benedict XVI has famously spoken of a 'dictatorship of relativism.' But I think that that is not quite right. Most liberals are not the least bit relativistic about their own convictions. A more accurate epithet would have been 'dictatorship of liberalism,' and in Judge Walker that dictatorship has taken on concrete form." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/05/the-prop-8-decision-and-the-dictatorship-of-liberalism/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/04/what-should-medicine-do-when-it-cant-save-your-life/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/04/what-should-medicine-do-when-it-cant-save-your-life/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:20:03 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=67373 writing in The New Yorker: "In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality, and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die . . . The trouble is that we've built our medical system and culture around the long tail. We've created a multitrillion-dollar edifice for dispensing the medical equivalent of lottery tickets—and have only the rudiments of a system to prepare patients for the near-certainty that those tickets will not win. Hope is not a plan, but hope is our plan." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/04/what-should-medicine-do-when-it-cant-save-your-life/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/02/what-social-science-does-and-doesnt-know/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/02/what-social-science-does-and-doesnt-know/#comments Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:17:13 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=67154 writing at City Journal: "Over many decades, social science has groped toward the goal of applying the experimental method to evaluate its theories for social improvement. Recent developments have made this much more practical, and the experimental revolution is finally reaching social science. The most fundamental lesson that emerges from such experimentation to date is that our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound. Despite confidently asserted empirical analysis, persuasive rhetoric, and claims to expertise, very few social-program interventions can be shown in controlled experiments to create real improvement in outcomes of interest." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/08/02/what-social-science-does-and-doesnt-know/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/29/the-manhattan-declaration-and-christian-principles/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/29/the-manhattan-declaration-and-christian-principles/#comments Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:29:56 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/29/the-manhattan-declaration-and-christian-principles/ writing at First Things / First Thoughts: "At the magazine’s blog Mere Comments, Hutchens criticizes [the Manhattan Declaration] for making what he sees as [a mistaken conflation of the principles of Christianity and 'modern democracy'] . . . [The Declaration] just does give unqualified endorsement to something called modern democracy, as though the desirability of such a thing were obvious to Christians as such." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/29/the-manhattan-declaration-and-christian-principles/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/22/robert-wright-and-robert-george-moral-reasoning-and-natural-law/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/22/robert-wright-and-robert-george-moral-reasoning-and-natural-law/#comments Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:26:49 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/22/robert-wright-and-robert-george-moral-reasoning-and-natural-law/ Big Questions Online: "In the first installment of his monthly 'diavlog' for BQO, Robert Wright discusses how we reason about the human good with Robert P. George of Princeton University, a leading scholar of modern natural law theory. Their hour-long conversation covers: Chapter 1: Natural law vs. utilitarianism (12:01) Chapter 2: Why exactly is friendship good? (14:03) Chapter 3: Euthanasia and human dignity (7:22) Chapter 4: Natural law and conservativism (5:02) Chapter 5: What can be done in the name of the greater good? (12:28) Chapter 6: Just war theory (6:17)." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/22/robert-wright-and-robert-george-moral-reasoning-and-natural-law/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/21/gregory-s-baylor-a-report-from-fires-campus-freedom-network-conference/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/21/gregory-s-baylor-a-report-from-fires-campus-freedom-network-conference/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:13:22 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=66141 Speak Up Movement / University: "Last week, I had the great pleasure of attending a conference sponsored by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's Campus Freedom Network. Along with Greg Lukianoff (FIRE’s President), Adam Kissel (the Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program), and Professor Daphne Patai (a member of FIRE’s board of directors), I participated in a panel discussion entitled, "The Philosophical and Practical Underpinnings of Academic Liberty." ... In my prepared remarks, I observed that utilitarian rationales are not the only ethical arguments for free speech — one can make 'deontological' claims as well. People are entitled to speak and people are entitled to receive information, whether or not the effects of the expression are desirable. These entitlements can be called 'rights,' and thinkers differ on where these rights come from. I believe that people are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to liberty — which includes the right to free speech. To be sure, many today reject the claim that rights come from God, but this conception of rights animated the thinking of the Framers." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/21/gregory-s-baylor-a-report-from-fires-campus-freedom-network-conference/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/21/law-review-re-framing-our-perspective-on-the-end-of-life/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/21/law-review-re-framing-our-perspective-on-the-end-of-life/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:29:18 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=66210 Stopping for Death: Re-Framing Our Perspective on the End of Life Ruth C. Stern and J. Herbie Difonzo, 20 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 387 (2009) "This Article argues neither for nor against physician aid in dying. Rather, it reflects upon our growing sensitivity to suffering, and how this increased knowledge alters expectations of the doctor-patient relationship. Further, learning more about the nature and impact of serious illness highlights some of the limitations of our current end of life laws and policies. The legal parameters for voluntarily ending our lives are confused and in conflict. Moreover, they have been debated and enacted amidst a cacophony of rights' talk, discourse about the permissible extent of governmental authority and the range of constitutionally-commanded privacy. Indeed, the current clamor threatens to drown out more subtle yet insistent voices asking that, before we bestow a right, we thoroughly investigate the nature of the wrong. But an insufficient amount of scholarly literature has addressed the conditions at ground zero in the assisted suicide debate: the quality of life of those near death, as well as their expectations for care and how a reasonable society might fulfill them." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/21/law-review-re-framing-our-perspective-on-the-end-of-life/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/02/when-the-aristocrat-met-democracy-review-of-toquevilles-discovery-of-america/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/02/when-the-aristocrat-met-democracy-review-of-toquevilles-discovery-of-america/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:32:44 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=65098 Toqueville's Discovery of America in The Washington Times: "For Tocqueville, democracy could not be reduced to a mere form of government; rather, he described it as 'a state of mind as much as a political system,' consisting both of institutional structure and 'habits of the heart.' Mr. Damrosch discusses Tocqueville's insights into the problem of the tyranny of the majority. He also touches on some of Tocqueville's most prescient predictions, including the prophetic description of America and Russia as two nations destined to become world powers . . . " ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/07/02/when-the-aristocrat-met-democracy-review-of-toquevilles-discovery-of-america/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/28/reason-will-appetite-and-the-end-of-education-considering-the-role-of-evolutionary-theory-in-modern-teaching-methods/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/28/reason-will-appetite-and-the-end-of-education-considering-the-role-of-evolutionary-theory-in-modern-teaching-methods/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:37:50 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=64408 writing at The Circe Institute: "My conviction is this: when you apply naturalistic evolutionary teaching to education, you undercut education itself. ... When Darwin was believed to have demonstrated that humanity descended through an evolutionary process so that God was no longer a necessary concept and the soul was 'a needless hypothesis,' any Christian classical conception of reason and will were dismissed. Knowledge was no longer regarded as the internalization of an external object into a soul that no longer existed through a contemplative process that no longer could happen. Now it was, as Dewey said, 'the adaptation of an organism to its environment.' The will was no longer regarded as the faculty by which the individual overcame his appetites, but as a supreme appetite to propagate the species. Consequently, the twentieth century is the story of the neglect of reason and will and the exaltation of appetite. It may be that modern education is summarized in that single sentence." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/28/reason-will-appetite-and-the-end-of-education-considering-the-role-of-evolutionary-theory-in-modern-teaching-methods/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/i-love-my-kids-so-much-that-i-didn%e2%80%99t-have-them/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/i-love-my-kids-so-much-that-i-didn%e2%80%99t-have-them/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:09:29 +0000 ADF Alliance Alert http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/i-love-my-kids-so-much-that-i-didn%e2%80%99t-have-them/ write at Ignatius Insight: "Singer and Co. seek to find meaning, or say there is meaning to be found, while implicitly adhering to a materialism that has no meaning aside from what man subjectively stables onto it. Most people, I'm convinced, can't and won't live with such an approach to reality and truth. Most people want to really live and love. Which is why we must be able to give an account for the hope we have been given (1 Pet. 3:15). " ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/i-love-my-kids-so-much-that-i-didn%e2%80%99t-have-them/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/thomas-fleming-on-abortion-an-argument-from-rationality/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/thomas-fleming-on-abortion-an-argument-from-rationality/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:09:17 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=63523 writing at Chronicles: "Most modern schools of philosophy base morality on the principles of reason, and the principal accounts of moral development emphasize growth in moral reasoning rather than moral behavior.To be a human person in this sense would mean that an individual is conscious of his own existence and capable of making rational decisions, including the decision to remain alive. On this reasoning Michael Tooley concludes that infants, born and unborn, are not persons and do not possess a right to life; mature higher mammals, on the other hand, may well be persons. Some animal rights advocates have reached the same conclusions: It is wrong to kill elephants and primates but not human babies." ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/21/thomas-fleming-on-abortion-an-argument-from-rationality/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/14/merely-human-thats-so-yesterday/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/14/merely-human-thats-so-yesterday/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:37:38 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=62958 New York Times: "[T]he Singularity — a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state. At that point, the Singularity holds, human beings and machines will so effortlessly and elegantly merge that poor health, the ravages of old age and even death itself will all be things of the past. . . . Some of Silicon Valley’s smartest and wealthiest people have embraced the Singularity. They believe that technology may be the only way to solve the world’s ills, while also allowing people to seize control of the evolutionary process. . . . 'We will transcend all of the limitations of our biology,' says Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor and businessman who is the Singularity’s most ubiquitous spokesman and boasts that he intends to live for hundreds of years and resurrect the dead, including his own father. 'That is what it means to be human — to extend who we are.'" ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/14/merely-human-thats-so-yesterday/feed/ 0 http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/09/roger-scruton-on-pessimism-and-transhumanism/ http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/09/roger-scruton-on-pessimism-and-transhumanism/#comments Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:15:13 +0000 Admin http://www.alliancealert.org/?p=62574 writing at New Humanist: "In the world that we are now entering there is a striking new source of false hope, in the 'trans-humanism' of people like Ray Kurzweil, Max More and their followers. The transhumanists believe that we will replace ourselves with immortal cyborgs, who will emerge from the discarded shell of humanity like the blessed souls from the grave in some medieval Last Judgement. The transhumanists don't worry about Huxley's Brave New World: they don't believe that the old-fashioned virtues and emotions lamented by Huxley have much of a future in any case. The important thing, they tell us, is the promise of increasing power, increasing scope, increasing ability to vanquish the long-term enemies of mankind, such as disease, ageing, incapacity and death. But to whom are they addressing their argument? If it is addressed to you and me, why should we consider it? Why should we be working for a future in which creatures like us won’t exist, and in which human happiness as we know it will no longer be obtainable? . . . " ]]> http://www.alliancealert.org/2010/06/09/roger-scruton-on-pessimism-and-transhumanism/feed/ 0