cam, 380 words, 0 comments, Foreign Affairs, Morality, Foreign Policy, Walter Russell Mead, American Foreign Policy

I sometimes wonder if authors write books specifically for me. Walter Mead's Special Providence is one such book. It discusses American foreign policy under the broad washes of Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian and Jacksonian doctrines. It also asks why is American foreign policy blind to its own history, presuming it all started with WWII, when American politics and even the American nation was so reliant on American politicians getting the foreign policy right. (more)

cam, 684 words, 3 comments, Michael Gerson, Atheism, Morality, Immanual Kant, Reason

Michael Gerson has an article in the WaPo which argues that atheists are unable to explain how someone is moral without their being some theistic intervention in the natural world; acknowledged by the individual or not. Gerson discredits Kantian morality and Bentham's utilitarianism in coming to the conclusion that without understanding that the moral qualities of "love, harmony and sympathy" flow through God as creator then morality becomes a cruel joke of nature and is deprived of goodness or moral quality. (more)

cam, 213 words, 0 comments, Augustus, Rome, Morality

Everitt on Augustus: "Perhaps the most instructive aspect of Augustus' approach to politics was his twin recognition that in the long run power was unsustainable without consent, and consent could best be won by associating radical constitutional change with a traditional and moralizing ideology." (more)

cam, 907 words, 0 comments, Defence Act, Morality, ADF, AIF, Conscription

The most immoral law a nation-state can make is one that coerces an individual into taking another individuals life. In the issue of conscription, it is immoral for a nation-state to use their monopoly on coercion to force an individual into service and then place them in a position where they may be required to take the life of another individual.

The nation-state does this for their own perpetuation, glory and selfish interests. It can be argued that moral clarity of any issue is lost once it becomes political and falls into the vehicle of state power. The original Defence Act of 1903 (link is to current legislative form) contained language that prohibited the government from forcing conscripts to serve outside of Australia. This was a very moral law. (more)