Human Dignity

Dr. Jennifer Frey delivered an excellent talk on “Suffering and the Problem of Evil” to the Thomistic Institute’s Yale University chapter this April. Listen to the whole talk, which I think is really a call to be practically wise amidst the tumult of our chaotic lives. I’ve transcribed the below from Dr. Frey’s talk and any errors are mine. First, on the classical view of justice: Now, it’s central to the virtue of justice in particular that there are certain things we must never do because that sort of action is to wrong someone. So, if we were to commit this sort of action—the wronging someone sort of action—then we would be not exercising justice but injustice. Murder, torture, rape, Read More ›

Recently, anthropologist Yitzchak Ben Mocha theorized on why human beings, alone among mammals, prefer to “mate” in private. From the Phys.Org story: He found that virtually every known culture practices private mating — even in places where privacy is difficult to find. He also looked for examples of other animals mating in private, and found none, except for the babblers [a bird species]. He also found that there were no explanations for it, and in fact, there were very few other people wondering why humans have such a proclivity. And, not surprisingly, he was unable to find any evolutionary theories on the topic. But evolution must be made to explain all! Ben Mocha concludes his paper by introducing a theory of his own — he believes Read More ›

“We locked down America with relative speed in March and we avoided all the worst predictions of the potential impact of the coronavirus, but we struggled to reach consensus anywhere on how to responsibly open back up.” If we had to write the one sentence history of the COVID-19 pandemic today, that would be something like America’s version. We don’t know how things will continue to play out, but what’s clear at the moment is that state and local leaders appear to be paralyzed. Unfortunately, those bearing some of the greatest costs of this ruling class paralysis aren’t likely the first to come to our minds. Their story is not told in the TL/DR history of this time. We’re witnessing Read More ›

Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is over, but I want to return to something Bloomberg once said that was brought up by reporter Peter Hasson during Bloomberg’s most recent campaign that speaks to a fundamental issue in healthcare issue: Billionaire and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said in a 2011 video that some elderly cancer patients should be denied treatment in order to cut health care costs. He drew on a hypothetical example of a “95-year old” with “prostate cancer” to signal an openness he would have to reform how Medicare provides treatment. “All of these costs keep going up, nobody wants to pay any more money, and at the rate we’re going, health care is going to bankrupt us,” said Read More ›

I’m excited to join the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Let me share my approach to the issues of human dignity, liberty, and equality and the moral duties that the Center exists to consider and advance. I believe that when it comes to issues of human life we’re generally engaging conflicts that are neither unresolvable nor destined for stalemate. We’re debating issues that matter. We can lose sight of this due to the tendency to throw our hands into the air over the seemingly complex nature of many human life issues, content to “agree to disagree” because “it’s complicated.” For those determined to advance human dignity, liberty, and equality, settling for this false peace is, in fact, a surrender Read More ›