Monika Schaefer, a Jasper, Alberta woman, and daughter of post-war German immigrants, is currently in a German prison awaiting trial for Holocaust denial, a criminal offense in that and several other European countries, though not in Canada. The charge was… Read More ›
Social and Political Philosophy
THE MIGRANT DILEMMA
By a human right, as distinct from a civil right, is meant, presumably, one one has independently of the polity to which she happens to belong. But a human right does not extend between sovereign jurisdictions. By this I mean… Read More ›
PEOPLE SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS
Correlation is not causation. Yes it is. In fact that’s all it is. Isn’t that exactly what Hume showed us? You can’t see a cause, you can only infer it. And you can only infer it from a correlation. Sheesh!… Read More ›
JURAL NULLIFICATION
What’s doing the work in justifying some political arrangement we’ve made is not whatever the official justification might be – as, for example, in the preamble to the Second Amendment to the American Constitution – but rather that in virtue… Read More ›
OH BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT
As a philosopher of mind Kant was beyond brilliant. As an ethicist he was an idiot. Kant asks us to consider two scenarios: I steal your wallet, you steal mine. If I think the one is okay, I have to… Read More ›
UNSOLICITED WORDS OF ADVICE INSTALLMENT #18
Those who claim that the end is nigh – today it’s anthropogenic global warming that’s most widely thought is going to do us in – are aware, are they not, that the world is going to come to an end… Read More ›
WHY BLACK LIVES MIGHT MATTER AFTER ALL
You and I allow each other to freely be in each other’s presence on condition that we won’t misbehave. Were this not so we’d all still be cowering in our caves, “and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,… Read More ›
NECESSITATED HYPOCRISY
There are a few things that I get that other people don’t. If this weren’t so I wouldn’t be of much use to them, now would I? So no, since it’s not hubris, no apology warranted, so none forthcoming. And… Read More ›
IN DEFENCE … NO, MAKE THAT IN PRAISE, OF OMAR KHADR
Here’s a newsflash for all those American servicemen serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. And for their wives. When you enlist in a nation’s armed forces, there’s an understanding that at some point you may be asked to go off somewhere… Read More ›
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THOSE TRUTHERS?
The nineteen martyrs of 9/11 were never charged let alone convicted of a crime. This is because – so as not to squander precious prosecutorial resources – we tend not to indict dead people. But now let’s suppose the Truthers… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 