GM Food: Hard to Swallow

Emerging genetic technology promises us vast new opportunities in the food industry. But there are many controversies and many unknowns, giving the question “What’s for dinner?” new weight and urgency.

This article is short primer on genetically modified (GM) foods, including its most controversial aspect, terminator seeds, and some ethical thoughts about their use and regulation.

Originally published in re:generation quarterly, 6.4; 2000. Edited slightly for the Web.

Read the article here

Ethical Realism (review)

Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World, Anatol Lieven & John Hulsman
(Pantheon Books/Random House, 200pp).

This review originally appeared in slightly shorter form in The Christian Century, March 20, 2007.

Click here to read this review

Electing Not to Vote

Contrary to what Chuck Colson has written, voting is not a sacred duty. There are limits to the claims that the state can make on an individual’s conscience, and it may be for some a sacred duty to not vote.

Read the editorial here

Am I a Liberal?

Three times that I know of last year I got caught in the crossfire of America’s so-called culture war by three people who think they know me better than I know myself. Each responded to pieces I’d written be labeling me ‘liberal ‘— end of discussion. The epithet shut down any further thinking on their part about what I had been arguing for or against, like dragsters braking hard at the end of a quarter-mile run.

Read the essay here

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