Tag Archives: 9/11
Skepticism as a habit of mind
We would rule out skepticism only if we want to rule out investigation of diverse ideas or hypotheses. Why would we want to do that?
Infamy
Infamy: Political Crimes and Their Consequences
Advent of torture
People everywhere respect what is most remote and least liable to have its reputation put to the test. At the least reverse, many would look down on us, and would join our enemies against us.
Cruelty and rule of law
If we expand our conception of what is possible, we may grasp how we reached this point in our history.
Methods to evaluate stories
When governments operate in secrecy, trust in government goes down. Rumors circulate about what government is up to.
NATO’s purpose and future
The U. S. renounced its leadership of NATO seventeen years ago. After Trump’s extraordinary, two-year tirade against the alliance and its members, Macron wonders why we hang around.
Blood politics
Just as all is fair in war, no presumption of innocence exists in politics. To take the recent Supreme Court …
Rights and the law
I thought about rights and the law this week, as items in the news lead to those subjects these days.
End of democracy
We all want to be left alone. In the past we valued democracy, because it seemed the best path to a good life. We tolerated politicians, because they did not come around that often. The contract we had with them seemed to work well enough. This round seems different. This time, democratic institutions could continue to wane for several generations.
Vigilance
As individuals who assault women or children eventually must face true accusations, so the state eventually pays for what it does to the people and institutions who trust it to preserve and protect the republic and its constitution. The state cannot escape history’s judgment, or ours. It never does.
Respected conspiracy theorist
If we ask what happened, our minds dream up thought experiments to help us explain phenomena that appear inexplicable. If we dream up thought experiments, we start to read books like those by David Ray Griffin. By that point, you have transformed yourself into a respected conspiracy theorist.