Suppose a consortium of powerful interests wanted to replace a president with someone who’s policies they preferred–and blame it on a patsy. What’s wrong with that? Or suppose the leaders of foreign nation orchestrated a terrorist act as a rationale for US forces to take out their enemies—at the expense of 3,000 Americans. What’s wrong... Read More

Images of Black people are pressed on us so insistently these days, usually as models of some kind, that it is natural to ask just how admirable Black people are. For example, are they especially moral? Are they especially industrious, especially respectful of other people’s property, especially reliable, especially good to children, especially merciful, especially... Read More

One of the surest hallmarks of a cultural death spiral is omnipresent anomie and the universal deadening of the capacity to experience shock. Everything in culture becomes repetitive and suffocatingly numb. I was reminded of this back in June when a friend sent me a video from Wi Spa, a Korean spa in Los Angeles... Read More

We like to think that all people feel empathy to the same degree. In reality, it varies a lot from one person to the next, like most mental traits. We are half-aware of this when we distinguish between "normal people" and "psychopaths," the latter having an abnormally low capacity for empathy. The distinction is arbitrary,... Read More

The First World War casts a dark shadow over the 20th century. It shattered the relative peace that had reigned since the Napoleonic Wars, killing some 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians. It is also blamed for causing the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the postwar decline of traditional morality—the flapper era, and the rise... Read More

Throughout the world, kinship used to define the limits of morality. The less related you were to someone, the less moral you had to be with him or her. We see this in the Ten Commandments. The phrase "against thy neighbor" qualifies the commandment against bearing false witness and, implicitly, the preceding ones against killing,... Read More

Growing up in rural Ontario, I would talk with older folks about politics. A favorite topic was Quebec, and how those selfish French Canadians wouldn't fight in the Boer War, the First World War, and the Second World War. Later, as a student in Quebec City, I would hear the other side. French Canadians saw... Read More