Here’s the text of a letter I sent to Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) on the Ilhan Omar controversy and (then) pending legislation intended to censure her. I sent a similarly-worded letter to my own congressional representative, Tom Malinowski. I’ve listed some useful readings on the controversy after the text of the letter. Here is a useful backgrounder to the controversy, from The New York Times. Here is the draft of the congressional resolution I had in front of me as I wrote the letter below. This is the IHRA “Working Definition of Antisemitism” referenced in the draft resolution, and criticized in the fourth paragraph of my letter.  Continue reading →

The Winter 2018 issue of Reason Papers is now out, care of Shawn Klein and Carrie-Ann Biondi. Contents include Part II of a symposium on Stoicism, yet another hair-raisingly frightening/deeply counter-intuitive paper by Steve Kershnar, and some book reviews, including a longish one on sexual ethics by my friend Ray Raad.

Stoicism, atrocities, sex: in short, something for everyone. Check it out.

Continue reading →

A couple of days ago, my Facebook friend Gary Chartier posted this article from USA Today on increasing speed limits on American highways. As it happens, I’m at work on a paper on a traffic-related blog post I wrote here a few months ago, to the effect that police tailgating ought to be regarded as a form of legal entrapment. To that end, I’ve been reading a lot about cars, roads, road safety, traffic, tailgating, police chases, and entrapment. Research aside, I happen to be an unapologetic traffic-ethics bigot inclined to the view that when it comes to driving, it’s my way or the highway. So naturally, I leapt at the chance to pontificate on Gary’s post.

I think higher speed limits have a paradoxical effect. The higher the speed limit, the greater the generalized fear of driving; the greater the generalized fear, the greater the vigilance with which people drive; the greater the vigilance, the fewer fatal (high speed) accidents. (The general pattern has been statistically demonstrated.) Unfortunately, when there are accidents at that speed, they’re more likely than usual to be fatal. In New Jersey, higher speed limits have led to fewer fatalities. That said, I don’t think higher speed limits are a legitimate way of reducing fatalities; I call it “regulation by terror-induced vigilance.” It’s like reducing crime rates through extremely aggressive methods of deterrence.

Incredibly, Nathan Byrd, another of Gary’s FB friends, had the audacity to question my claims right there on Facebook. Continue reading →

Estlund: “It is a matter on which there will be reasonable disagreement, and that is fatal to the proposal to use either position in justifying political arrangements.” – Democratic Authority, p. 222

Reader: I disagree. Reasonably.

One strand in the “public reason” approach to political justification, stated in a very general form, might go something like this: in the context of disagreement about which shared, public norms to codify and enforce, when actual consensus is not present, the obvious or evident nature of important, relevant objective reasons, the recognition of which would rationally tend to lead to consensus (this situation constituting a certain kind of hypothetical consensus) suffices to make for permission to enforce.  One way to characterize this general approach is by saying that there is a “disagreement problem” specific to the relevant context that is “solved” by taking steps toward consensus (with enough truth in it) on the matter as against simply seeking the truth. Here is a specific proposal along these lines, a first shot in the right direction with this kind of approach, to play with and evaluate: Continue reading →