Whether you agree that it is morally acceptable or not, the argument against it that it doesn’t work is and always has been insane. And it now turns out that the CIA lied about its efficacy in getting bin Laden.
[Update a while later]
OK, I misread (or rather, didn’t read) the article, just going by a glance at the headline. Nonetheless, it’s still nuts to think that torture never provides actionable information.
…are less healthy than meat eaters.
Not surprising — evolutionarily, we’re omnivores. Vegetarians have to rationalize that they’re eating healthier to justify their unwillingness to eat animals, but they’re not.
Chad Orzell has some problems with the reboot. So do I and while it’s not his main concern, he puts his finger on it:
The bit where he called out young-Earth creationism for the impoverished scale of its vision was cute, too, though I’m not sure it was all that necessary or useful (in that the people who believe that won’t be watching, and wouldn’t be convinced), but then the show has clearly established a pattern of throwing red meat to the anti-religious from time to time.
Yes, if by “from time to time” he means every episode so far. I’m not traditionally religious, but I find it gratuitous and off putting. The writers and Tyson seem to get some sort of righteous satisfaction from putting a rhetorical thumb in the eyes of believers. It does not advance science, or their own secular religious cause.
They’re all rooted in the evil of unlimited government:
Adam Smith’s formula for prosperity — “peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice” — is the very modest ambition that conservatives aim for. Limited government is the tool by which government can be made to do good without necessarily being good, or being composed of good men.
The progressive state, on the other hand, is a state infused with moral purpose. If politics is to be a jihad, then the state must be invested with extraordinary power to achieve its moral mission. There is no way to invest the state with extraordinary power without also investing those powers in the men who hold its offices and staff its bureaucracies, which hold ever more nearly absolute power over our property and our lives. (And given that the Obama administration has made a policy of assassinating U.S. citizens without legal process, we might as well call that power “absolute.”) But if those elective offices and regulatory fortresses are to be staffed with men who are corrupt and corruptible, then the progressive vision of the morality-infused state must falter.
And they — we — are all corruptible.
Lord Acton was right, once again, about the power of power to corrupt.
Why they can’t protect us.
Unfortunately.
It’s not really a review, per se, but the book is featured at Ricochet today.
It’s a clash of two faiths. And it’s one that the Left will do anything to win. They’re really just the modern-day descendants of the Puritans.
[Update a few minutes later]
Why it’s so hard to get “progressives” to live by their own rules.
To them, rules are for the little people.
Some thoughts on their foolish political tendencies. And as noted, this Sagan quote is crucial in the “settled climate science” debate:
Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those that tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious who comes ambling along.
“Scientist” isn’t a profession. We are all scientists to one degree or another, if we are successful at every-day living.
Sorry #Cosmos, he may have been a martyr for religious freedom, but for science? Not so much.
But, you know, it has that truthiness thing going for it.
Dennis Wingo has the 2014 edition. Long but worth a read. I disagree with him on the first flight for commercial crew. I think it may happen as soon as next year.