Events in Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, are becoming comprehensible only in a broader regional context.… Read the rest
All entries by this author
Bush’s Strange Press Conference
Aug 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe key reality that Bush fails to grasp is that terrorism and democracy are not opposites.… Read the rest
Why is America so Weird?
Aug 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonScott McLemee discusses American weirdness aka exceptionalism with historian Eric Rauchway.… Read the rest
Jesus and Mo Do Religion With Irony
Aug 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe barmaid helps them.… Read the rest
Roger Scruton: Beware Irony-free Religion
Aug 23rd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt is from a posture of irony that every real negotiation, offer of peace, acceptance of the other, begins.… Read the rest
Sorting
Aug 22nd, 2006 5:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonI’m a little perturbed and repelled by this idea (expressed in comments on Difficult Daughters) that the murder of a girl is ‘worse’ than the murder of a woman. Actually, I think I’m more than a little perturbed and repelled by it. And no one but me has even taken issue with it yet, so perhaps that indicates it’s conventional wisdom, even a truism. But I think it’s all wrong, and not only wrong but sinister. I’m perturbed not only by the specifics of the ranking but by the idea that ranking of murder is a valid and sensible way of thinking about it. But why would it be? Why should it be? Why don’t we all have an … Read the rest
Civil Liberties Aren’t Eternal Verities
Aug 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSocial critics say our culture tends to mistake ephemeral modern phenomena for eternal truths.… Read the rest
What’s Behind ‘Muslim Anger’?
Aug 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMark Sageman points to small group dynamics as a key trigger.… Read the rest
Religious ‘Worship’ Should Remain Mandatory
Aug 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonCatholic Education Service says sixth formers should not be allowed to opt out.… Read the rest
Catholic Church Backs ‘Faith Crime’ Investigation
Aug 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Another sign that Christianphobia has become fashionable and acceptable.’… Read the rest
Sunday School Teacher Fired for Being a Woman
Aug 22nd, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonShe’d taught there for 54 years, but Paul said women had to shut up, so that’s that.… Read the rest
You Can’t Say That
Aug 22nd, 2006 12:00 am | By Ophelia BensonA criminal investigation has been started by Scotland Yard into an advertisement from the Gay Police Association (GPA) that blamed religion for a 74 per cent increase in homophobic crime…Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, who leads the domestic violence and hate crime unit, disclosed the investigation in a letter to Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative MP. He wrote: “The original advertisement has been recorded as a religiously aggravated hate crime incident following a crime allegation by a member of the public.”
The original advertisement is a hate crime (incident). That’s interesting. Where I come from it’s things like murders and assaults that are hate crimes, not just ads. But that’s okay, maybe I come from a silly place. … Read the rest
‘Religiously Aggravated Hate Crime’ Investigated
Aug 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSo be careful what you say. Better yet, don’t say anything.… Read the rest
Emotions Influence Moral Reasoning
Aug 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe hope is that by better understanding how we think, we can teach ourselves to think better.… Read the rest
Michael Walzer on Regime Change and Just War
Aug 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonNGOs, such as HRW or AI, also aim, in their own way, at regime change.… Read the rest
Harold Meyerson Reviews Peter Beinart
Aug 21st, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSince 1968, it has almost always been time to reinvent the liberal project. … Read the rest
Liberal Internationalism
Aug 21st, 2006 1:38 am | By Ophelia BensonCatching up with le blog Bérubé again, and found something relevant to thoughts about universalism and human rights and pluralism and discussion.
… Read the restWe have not yet devised the political means to realize this utopian vision, and perhaps we never will: utopia, to date, is a place we know only by way of speculative fiction. But over the years, as we’ve developed family/clan relations, city-states, empires, kingdoms, caliphates, constitutional monarchies, theocracies, military dictatorships, communist autocracies and liberal democracies, we’ve come to learn that liberal democracies stand the best chance of realizing some approximation of that ideal, and – just as importantly – the best chance of changing their collective minds, so to speak, about how to approximate the ideal as they
How to Resolve the Paradox
Aug 21st, 2006 1:03 am | By Ophelia BensonNorm said something interesting today.
… Read the restA framework for public life based on accepting that there is no single ‘road to salvation’, or – put otherwise – no single overriding moral truth, or that there is no way to be completely certain about whatever moral truth there may be, would seem to be the only alternative to permanent warfare between people of different belief systems (and that applies, of course, not only to religious belief systems). Call this framework ‘pluralist liberalism’. Is it not itself premissed, then, upon principles for which universal validity is claimed by its adherents? Some would say no, but I’ve never seen a persuasive argument for that. Liberalism makes a claim of its own to moral truth,
Difficult Daughters
Aug 20th, 2006 7:28 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnother pesky disobedient unsubmissive daughter eliminated.
In the garden, buried under a metre of soil and with her jeans and blouse soaked in blood, was the body of the missing girl. Her throat had been slit.
(Why is the Independent calling her a girl? She was twenty-one. Do men of that age get called boys? No. So why is the Indy calling Hina Saleem a girl? Especially in this context? Some strange unconscious desire to trivialize her or make it seem that she really belonged to her father in some way? Or just dumb as a post habitual belief that women really are childish?)
… Read the restAt the beginning of July, she was said to have refused her father’s insistent demand
Nick Cohen on Educational Abundance
Aug 20th, 2006 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPlenty of media-literate drama queens, not enough engineers, mathematicians and linguists.… Read the rest