The barrel of a gun

The United States has a massive nuclear arsenal and the best-equipped, best-trained military the world has ever seen. It is an awesome, fearsome machine that can rain down inexorable death from the heavens. But that’s not why I drive on the right side of the road. I drive on the right side of the road [...]

Mission Trips & AmeriCorps

Matt Yglesias discusses Sen. Chris Dodd's national service plan, and in doing so touches on something that often arises in church regarding the practice of mission trips. Here's Matt: There's nothing wrong, generically, with such programs but they really need to be looked at one-by-one on the merits primarily through the lens of whether or [...]

Quine’s landlady

Let's go back to our hypothetical old man sleeping in the doorway and to our non-hypthetical old man trapped in a submerged pickup truck. (Who is, police report, in stable condition.) This is a free country. Each of us is free to see a stranger trapped or abandoned and to do nothing. We are free [...]

Who is you?

The previous post tells the story of three ordinary people who acted as citizens and neighbors when confronted with a drowning man. Their actions were heroic, yet this is very much a textbook case. This was an ethics professor's hypothetical in real life. (Ethics profs love hypthetical drowning victims almost as much as they love [...]