Related Posts

Is Torture Utilitarian?

Glad other people are speaking up about the immorality of torture. As politicians argue, and our pragmatist-in-chief tries to find an angle, we can agree that not all moral dilemmas can be reduced to a cost-benefit analysis of pleasure and pain. There are some kinds of pain a morally serious person ought never to inflict. [From Is Torture Utilitarian?]

The system at work

On the surface, this is an important development, because if every Ayatollah now denounces the attacks on US and UK troops, it theoretically becomes easier to isolate those Shi’ah, and to a certain extent Sunnis, who do carry out attacks. I’m hopeful that the attacks in Sadr city will settle down, and more importantly that the city itself will be less likely to serve as a launching ground for others in Iraq.

On Ayaan Hirsi Ali [updated]

I think this op-ed in the NYT hits the question of Hirsi Ali’s deportation right on the head. She wasn’t ejected because she professed her hatred for Islam (not the Muslims who brought her to her state), she’d been doing that for several years. She was ejected because she hates herself, therefore she was unable to look at the situation of refugees and asylum seekers with compassion and understanding. By creating the wall of legal misanthropy, so well-crafted against her own situation, she had to know she had to go. Update: If you are not already in love with the…