Condi Rice was on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopolis" talking about how Isreal should "consider the broader consequences" of its current bombing activities in Lebanon, and she specifically urged Isreal to try harder to avoid civilian casualties. Huh? As much as I deplore Israel's bombings, does anyone in the…
Ever since the tragedy of September 11, 2001, there has been a fairly constant refrain heard in the United States. Americans, who once thought their country invulnerable, their culture beyond reproach and their global image impeccable, are asking, “Why do they hate us?” Human emotion being what it is, there is no single or simple answer to that question. They hate us for a number of reasons, some illogical, but some very understandable. And, while hatred is never productive, never defensible, its causes should never be ignored because its consequences can be catastrophic.
One of the things I hear Americans say they hate about us is our freedom. I would have to agree. There are those in the rest of the world who are as offended by our freedoms as are we by their despotism. They hate the fact that we have freedom of religion, that we have freedom of speech, that our women are becoming increasingly free to determine their own destinies. They believe that all these freedoms are an offense against all that is decent and holy.
I believe they are wrong. It is because of our freedom that I am able to write what I write, however controversial, however offensive to some. It is because of our freedom that my family moved to the United States in 1960. We left South Africa when the white government there was stripping the people, both white and black, of their freedom to speak out against injustice, to live wherever and …
The term “critical thinking” is in danger of becoming a cliche. In the March 2006 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, Howard Gabennesch worked to put some edges on what type of thinking actually qualifies as “critical thinking.” I will cite extensively from this article.
For starters, “a critical thinker is disinclined to take things at face value, suspicious of certainties, not easily swayed by conventional (or unconventional) wisdom, and distrustful of the facades and ideologies that serve as the ubiquitous cosmetics of social life. In other words, critical thinkers are necessarily skeptics.” Referring to Skeptic Magazine, Gabennesch described skeptics as follows:
True skeptics leave open the possibility that their foundational assumptions will be disturbed. “Toes will be stepped on, tempers could flare, mortified members of the audience may stagger from the room.” Gabennesch cites the following examples of the sorts of claims about which true skeptics consciously work to keep an open mind, despite heavy social pressure to do otherwise:
My government’s violent occupation of Iraq has not flustered me nearly as much as the nonchalance of half of America. Why are so many Americans utterly complacent about the wretched and rampant killing going on in our names? Is it possible that we have become confused and seduced by the magnitude of the killings and by the music? Allow me to explain.
First, the magnitude. Stalin’s well-cited quote comes to mind: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” Perhaps the immoral nature of Bush’s aggression would be clearer had Bush caused the death of only one man. Imagine this hypothetical:
…President Bush looks out the window of the oval office and sees a man wearing a backpack walking down the sidewalk. In a dry-drunkish paranoid moment, Bush tells his security officers that the man walking down the sidewalk has nuclear weapons grade aluminum tubes in his backpack and orders his guards to capture “that terrorist.” While capturing the man with the backpack (it turns out to be empty), a U.S soldier is accidentally shot by friendly fire of a fellow soldier.
It is later disclosed that, one minute before giving his order to capture the man, a former ambassador had advised Bush the man wearing the backpack had just been searched and that he was not carrying anything dangerous. Then it came out that Bush and his highest advisers had intentionally blown the cover of a CIA agent to discredit the former
Check out this Huffpo post on the nauseatingly sactimonious Ralph Reed. In the upcoming GQ, Sean Flynn takes on — and takes down — Christian Coalition and Republican stalwart Ralph Reed, just days before the Georgia primary this Tuesday, July 18th in which Reed will seek the Republican nomination for…