Human Rights Don’t Exist
Listening to Michael Brendan Dougherty explain to Zack Beauchamp why he doesn’t believe in human rights put me in mind of Alasdair MacIntyre’s argument in After Virtue that “there are no such rights, and...
Category: Politics
Does Ayn Rand’s Influence on Paul Ryan Matter?
Following the leader, supporters of newly minted Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan have been downplaying the influence of Ayn Rand upon his political life and thought, but Ryan’s enthusiasm is too well documented for...
Paul Ryan and the Catholic Vote
Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches worries that Romney’s pick of former Ayn Rand superfan Paul Ryan will “ignite a religious war of words”: Although House Republicans of course were not eager to advertise this,...
An Evangelical Who Needs Postmodernism
We postmodernists get accused of making up truth, which is true in a sense, but also misleading. I can’t speak for all who don the name, but, as a card-carrying member of the club,...
Freedom to Profess the True Religion
Historian Roberto de Mattei has an old-fashioned and exclusive notion of religious freedom: The liberty of the believer is based on the truth believed and not on the self-determination of the individual. The Catholic...
Brief Remarks on Bigotry
Doug Mataconis looks to the definition of a bigot to show that the word does not accurately characterize all opponents of same-sex marriage. He is correct. Bigotry involves obstinate devotion to one’s hatred and...
Critics of Religion
Ross Douthat wants more candor from religion’s critics and detractors: It may seem strange that anyone could look around the pornography-saturated, fertility-challenged, family-breakdown-plagued West and see a society menaced by a repressive puritanism. But...
A Win for Opponents of the HHS Contraception Rule?
Score one for Hercules, but the hydra lives on. The Wall Street Journal reports: “a federal judge on Friday granted a temporary injunction sought by Catholic owners of a Colorado heating-and-cooling company who had...
Similar Tactics for Fighting Chick-fil-A and Abortion?
Freddie deBoer makes an observation: [W]hen local politicians in Boston and Chicago use zoning or licensure or similar to ban Chick-Fil-A, they’re using tactics that conservatives have used for decades in the abortion fight....
Single Virtue Voting
Not being the sort of voter who decides am0ng presidential candidates based primarily on their stances on issues, I am far from ever being a single issue voter. I could justly be called a...
