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History is Calling

An Open Letter to Republican Senators and Representatives

Conscience compels me to write you on this day called Good Friday to humbly and earnestly implore you to consider certain matters in a different light. The eyes of the world, and the eyes of history are upon you. Make no mistake—history is not mere dead letters on the pages of old books but a living, unfolding process in which we all participate, and in which you, as representatives of the People of the United States of America, have the noble honor of playing a central role. With such an honor comes a great weight of moral responsibility, and the tide of events now calls upon you to exercise this responsibility.

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The Moral Imperative of Free Trade

When debates over trade arise, one often hears calls for “protecting American jobs” through tariffs and trade restrictions. These arguments can sound initially compelling: why shouldn't we defend domestic industries against cheaper foreign competition? Why shouldn’t we “put America first?” But if we dig beneath a surface-level analysis, we find that, while protectionism may shield a visible few, it comes at a great but often hidden cost to the unseen many, and that free trade benefits orders of magnitude more Americans than do protectionist tariffs—both as workers and consumers. Nor is the case merely a question of economic expediency, but a moral case that touches on the well-being of citizens across virtually every material aspect of their lives.

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The Fear of Death

Shakespeare’s Hamlet advised us, “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.” Death, he soliloquized, is an undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, the thought of which makes us bear the woes of this life rather than take up our bare bodkins and end all our suffering in one decisive stab. Death, as the story goes, is something to be feared, not merely as an end to life, but as an intractably mysterious state into which individuals go when their earthly time is up, a state that might contain more of the same suffering and woe as our present situation, in greater or lesser proportion.  This story of death as a change of state of an individual, as we shall see, begins to seem less and less plausible the closer one inspects it.  If death is not a change of state or venue, but simply the annihilation of an individual, what attitudes might we rationally take towards death, and toward the fact of our own mortality? 

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Transgender Brains and Mad Scientists—A Question of Identity

Few topics within the contemporary culture wars have generated as much controversy, confusion, and even outright rage, than topics surrounding transgender individuals. From the proper characterization of their gender identities, to their workplace rights, to their place within sports, it seems virtually every facet of their social existence becomes fodder for debate and rife with discord. A perpetual characteristic of the debates surrounding these topics is just how confused everyone seems to be on all sides. Their foes tend to have a childishly simplistic view of sex and gender, which they wrongfully and arrogantly believe is plain fact supported by biological science, and think that anyone who thinks otherwise must be more concerned with feelings than facts. Their would-be friends often seem equally oblivious to the science behind transgender biology, instead preferring to be ecumenical to all perspectives of marginalized LGBT groups, with the result being a way of speaking surrounding these topics that is linguistically clunky, often confusing, and sometimes flatly incoherent.

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Trump, the King of Fools

Far too much has been said already. Too much ink spilled. Too much bandwidth used. Too much oxygen burned. Too much mental energy expended. Too much opportunity cost spent. Too much time wasted of the brief lives of mortals in arguing the painfully obvious, only to have such uranium-clad reasoning fail to move the slobbering mass of imbeciles who still support him, and who are still numerous enough within the electorate to threaten the world and the republic with a second disastrous term of Donald Trump. That so many people in what appears to be a persistent vegetative state are capable of walking upright to the polls is quite an astounding fact indeed, and one that must be reckoned with.

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