Ignorance is no Defense

In a New York Times Op-ed (March 30) Kristof raises the critical issue of the remarkable ignorance of Americans. He points out that compared with the people of other developed countries Americans are ignorant as a people and the leaders they select relatively uninformed. He points to numerous studies, showing, for example, the remarkable percentage [...]

Sex in an Enlightened Society

Elliot Spitzer has been caught in a media and federal web for arranging to meet a prostitute in a Washington hotel. He has now resigned as Governor of New York. This is only the latest in an endless series of political and social tragedies dating back to prehistory. Thinking about this “crime”, several points need [...]

Secularism Still “Winning”

Those readers who might be discouraged by the inability of enlightenment ideas and ideals to replace the dedication to the superstitions of organized religion might be encouraged by reading Alan Wolfe’s “And the Winner is. . .” in the March Atlantic. He argues that the assumption that secular values are losing out to religious values [...]

Existentialism, or the Missing Ingredient?

The other day I read about a popular Harvard professor who was still attached to the existentialists of the recent past, such as Sartre and Camus. Without knowing much about them, I too have thought that something like existentialism must be the life philosophy of the enlightened. Unfortunately, when I then went back and looked [...]

Economics 101: A New Look

When I was a beginning “soft social scientist” around 1950, it was always assumed that there was only one “hard” social science — economics. The reasoning was simple. Economics dealt with real figures and it used mathematics to manipulate these figures. This had been the road to success of the natural sciences and it was [...]

Comparisons

One notices that the enlightenment value given to inter-country comparisons in the consideration of policy is becoming more generally recognized. This is particularly true in regard to medical systems, as many writers have recognized that the United States has lagging infant mortality and longevity rates at the same time that it has by far the [...]

Wikipedia and Enlightenment

A recent New York Times magazine article on Wikipedia (Magazine, July 1) reminded me just how significant this encyclopedia is. It provides an instant access, free source of knowledge on almost anything (now over 1.8 million articles in the English section alone; it offers articles in 250 languages). Anyone can contribute, adding anything from a [...]

Sex and the Social Order

The obsession of Americans with sexual behavior diminishes both the common welfare and sense of justice of both Islamic and American people. It leads both groups to exclude from society large numbers of people who would otherwise be of service to the larger society, people who have, in any event, a right to liberty and [...]

Democracy Demands an Informed and Rational Public: Al Gore

In his new book, “The Assault on Reason”, Al Gore makes the case that our democracy is in trouble, and indeed our civilization is in trouble”, because of the decline in rational thought on all levels, especially in regard to public policy. He is not saying that we lack rational thinkers, but rather that the [...]

Religion in Politics

Paul Krugman, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist offers (4/13/07) some worrisome facts about the influence of the Christian right in the present administration (and beyond that more generally in Republican circles). He points out that Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson, boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration. We should [...]