Category: Feature

A Crying Need for Casuistry

A young man in social media has posted a complaint, which has been going around.  His girl friend wanted to go out with her female friends to visit a place the man thought unsafe and unsuitable.  He made her promise not to go, and the next day he learned she had gone, with the predictable result of rape and battery. How should the boyfriend respond?

10

Your COVID Papers, Please!

People are justifiably worried that the government is going to impose a COVID passport as a requirement for travel and for maskless participation in public events. Of course it is going to happen for some good reasons and for far more bad. The only question is how to deal with the government.

4

Wednesday’s Child: My Country Right or Wrong

Say what you will about them, but my compatriots have brains.  A new survey is just out, and though the gentle reader likely shares my own derisory view of social science, I want to use the occasion to vent some national pride.  The survey, by the Moscow think tank Levada Center, sampled 1600 adults spread over 134 locations throughout Russia who were interviewed in person in their homes.

4

Today’s Question, Number 1: Is Joe Biden a Racist?

A few days ago the President of the United States derided several governors as “neanderthals” because they decided to relax the restrictions on social life that had been imposed in a panic-response to COVID.  What has he got against that  extinct race of human beings? Neanderthal men, so far as I have been able to gather over the years, were a crude lot but capable of speech and, from the guesses I have read, endowed with an IQ range in the 70’s and 80’s.  Since they interbred with members of Homo sapiens, it may be unfair to refer to them...