Philosophy

The New York Times is calling for the government to “step up” its support for AmeriCorps, while reprimanding Republicans who want to reduce or eliminate funding for it, castigating them for forgetting “the value of community service.” AmeriCorps’ activities, which consist primarily in working with other non-profit organizations to “build…

“America was not founded on God and religion. America was founded on reason,” said Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, at the 2012 Reason Rally in Washington, DC. He added: The Age of Reason . . . was the age when humanity was born again, not from original sin, but…

[caption id="attachment_92906" align="alignnone" width="720"] Image by Gage Skidmore[/caption] The night after Andrew Breitbart died, I watched an episode of Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld in which Gavin McInnes told a delightful story about Breitbart. In an earlier episode of Red Eye, Gutfeld and McInnes had been mocking the idea of Donald…

Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum condemned the principle of the separation of church and state, as the Boston Globe reports. Last fall Santorum said that he “almost threw up” after reading John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech endorsing the principle. On Sunday, Santorum elaborated in an interview with ABC’s “This Week”: I…

A free society recognizes the right of each person to profess his beliefs—no matter how controversial—so long as he does not physically harm (or threaten) others or their property. The government of a free society stops and criminally charges anyone who forcibly interferes with another’s free expression. But last Halloween…

The Pope belies his church’s “pro life” posturing in his recent condemnation of “artificial fertility,” by which he means any medically assisted pregnancy not involving a “conjugal act” between husband and wife. Thus, the AP summarizes, the Pope condemns “sperm or egg donation and methods such as in vitro fertilization.”…

What are we to make of a presidential candidate, a man seeking the most powerful position in the world—a position that grants him the ability to sign bills into U.S. law and that places his fingers on U.S. nuclear launch codes—who thinks the problems of our nation are caused by . . . “Satan”?…

Burgess Laughlin reviews The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis, by Robert R. Reilly.

Surveys the metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics of these two creeds, showing, at each level, that only one of them corresponds to observable reality.

John was an ideal man, and his early death comes as close as anything can to being a metaphysical flaw in the universe.