arossp

If you believe Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, libertarians are nuts. In a recent commentary, they gave a litany of reasons for “Why libertarian society is doomed to fail.” The trouble is, they’ve managed not

Let’s say you believe X is true. You know that many smart, well-educated people believe X — including you! — but also that many smart, well-educated people disbelieve X. If you come across what strikes

There exists a need among theists to justify life’s purpose. Far from being content with self made goals, with personal achievements set by the individual for his own existential benefit, they desire an

If you take a look at the history of ideas from the Enlightenment onward, an unmistakable trend is the steady abandonment of superstition. Weather patterns aren’t caused by raucous spirits. Diseases aren’t

Religion has no place in policy debates. Because of the special nature of faith-based beliefs and values, religious arguments cannot bring anything valuable to the table when discussing the best political

The many articles on Newsvine regarding creationism and intelligent design have sparked a good deal of comments from proponents of those views, several expressing the same tired arguments for why creationism

Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism was a random find. I’d returned a handful of books to the library and was looking for something to listen to in the car. The title of

Confusions of the real and the ideal underly far too many policy debates. Libertarians, for instance, often assume perfectly functioning markets and compare them to genuinely (mis)functioning governments.

For those of us who believe in limited government and the fallibility of human certainty, the death penalty can pose quite a problem. Is it ever okay to kill someone because of his own criminal actions?

My libertarianism’s of an off-the-beaten-path sort, with its intellectual roots among the Ancient Greeks. I was recently asked on Twitter whether my libertarianism is of the consequentialist or deontological

Through sheer storytelling laziness, it tells us that nothing that came before mattered. The Last Jedi is the most disappointing Star Wars movie since Attack of the Clones. I don't believe I'm overstating

Good tech principles will become good governance principles, whether governments want them to or not. Decentralization and encryption/privacy are good principles for digital technology. They’re also pretty

Decentralization will bring about a radically freer and more dynamic world, and without waiting for the blessing of government. Decentralized, DIY Beginnings I got my start when I was 14, dialing into

When I was in middle school, my history class staged a walkout. I don’t recall the reasons, but I’m sure at the time we all thought them righteous and just. I’m also sure that if I remembered those reasons

The virtue of humility is found in recognizing our limits — and that humility ought to make fans of limited government. I could be wrong about pretty much anything. What I don’t know so outweighs what

We’re on our way to four(!) Avatar sequels, which is probably the same as number of people excited about Avatar sequels. It’s pretty striking, really, how quickly Avatar vanished from the public consciousness.

Ours has become a culture of hyperbole. Nothing characterizes American social interaction, mediated through politics and social media, more than our need to assure ourselves, and broadcast to others, that

I’m rereading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics for the umpteenth time, and a passage early on struck me as informative about much that’s going on in American culture today. It comes in Book 1 of the Ethics