Keith Burgess-Jackson

Isn’t it about time something was done for joggers? See here.

I hope Christopher Hitchens continues to hold Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire. See here for a devastating critique of the senator.

I found this site by happenstance. You might find it interesting.

This just in: napping is good for you. I’ve been napping for years. Today, for example, I ran 3.1 miles and napped for one hour.

Social scientists are trying to understand what makes some people progressive and others conservative. See here for a New York Times story. The unspoken (but false) assumption is that people don’t change. Many of us do, however. I went from left to right on the political spectrum. This is quite common. How many people go from right to left?

What I’d like to see is a study of consequentialists and deontologists.

Addendum: See here for commentary by Dr John J. Ray, who actually knows what he’s talking about when it comes to personality and politics. (Scroll down to the post entitled “Investigating Links Between Personality and Politics.”)

Will Nehs sent a link to this column by Bruce Thornton.

Here.

Here is an interesting op-ed column about constitutional war-making power. I don’t think Democrats want anything to do with the Iraq war. They consider it “Bush’s war.” He got into it; let him get out of it. What Democrats want is for the war to go away, so they can resume pandering to the American people.

To the Editor:

After decades of rightward drift, the Republican Party is dangerously out of touch with the interests and values of the American people.

Either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama would be a vast improvement over George W. Bush.

But I have to take issue with the assertion that Senator Clinton has “resisted pandering to the right.”

She voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, a decision she has rationalized by transparently claiming that she fell for administration propaganda.

She twice voted for the Patriot Act. She has opposed gay marriage and supported a politically motivated bill to ban flag-burning.

Either these positions represent her sincere beliefs or she is a shameless panderer. I cannot decide which is worse.

Mike Leonard
New York, Feb. 7, 2007

Patriotism is, perhaps, the most important form of allegiance. Dr Johnson said that it was ‘the last refuge of the scoundrel’ but, being a philosophical ignoramus, he did not distinguish between the love of one’s country (which is the normal sense of patriotism) and support for a state which overrides all other moral judgements. There is nothing wrong with patriotism in the simple sense: it is an emotion, not a moral position, and those who lack it, not those who express it, should be suspected, but not pre-judged, of being scoundrels.

(Lincoln Allison, Right Principles: A Conservative Philosophy of Politics [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984], 169)

Here.

Want to change the world for the better? See here.