Obama & McCain

The results of the November 4, 2008 U.S. presidential election will affect a globalised planet like never before. This article looks past the candidates sound-bites to imagine how each one, and his phalanx of advisors, might engage the wider world. The conclusions may surprise you.

A somewhat shorter version of this article was first published in Third Way, September 2008.

Read the article here

New Political Religions (Review)

The Pneumopathology of Modern Terrorism

New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, Barry Cooper (University of Missouri Press, 2004; 242 pp)

Of the many good books that have been released in recent years on the so-called war on terrorism, I’ve discovered helpful analyses ranging from technique to strategy to ideology to religion. Cooper’s insightful book on the pneumopathology of modern terrorism helped me to see even more clearly.

Click here to read this review

Memo to the President

MEMORANDUM TO: President Barack Obama
DATE: July 7, 2009
SUBJECT: Your Middle East policy: refuse to be drawn

Read the Memo

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

Other Published Writings

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