Posted on November 8, 2023 by tc
Recent developments in the legal world raise the issue of free association. I think Americans support a fairly broad freedom of association. We tend to hold that businesses and people have the right to choose their partners and collaborators, so long as those choices don’t contravene some other important right (think anti-discrimination laws). Generally, a firm choosing not to hire someone for expressing an opinion they find morally repugnant is understandable. We can’t force the firm to collaborate with someone diametrically opposed to its values, and trying to force a relationship would arguably be to the detriment of both parties.
Posted on October 21, 2023 by tc
With the Canadian assisted suicide program skyrocketing in popularity in the past year, I’ve been thinking about principled arguments for and against allowing suicide. Specifically, I’ve been considering how most (all?) arguments against suicide are by nature limits on autonomy. If this is the case, liberal theories of value may have to allow for suicide, even in contexts less clinical than Canada’s MAID program. Historically, proscriptions on suicide were religiously motivated — you cannot kill yourself because your life is not yours to take. Most people in the western world don’t really think this way anymore. They are instead motivated
Posted on August 30, 2023 by tc
The university I’m attending distributed some information on how to comply with the progressive orthodoxy on sensitivity in the classroom. Because there is almost no chance I would be able to convince any of the administrators or most of my peers of how silly these sensitivity guides are, I’d like to complain about it here a bit. Let’s first take a look at what the university says regarding viewpoint diversity: We are off to a wonderful start. NYU is proudly affirming that viewpoint diversity is key to the goals of post-secondary education. One would imagine this sort of diversity is
Posted on March 3, 2023 by tc
Recently, Joe Biden said he would veto a national ban on abortion, which has reignited the perennial discussion on his alleged Catholic faith. Biden has long claimed to be Catholic, but he obviously stands in grave opposition to a key teaching of the church on abortion. I’m not really interested in Biden’s personal faith, but I always get annoyed with the various talking points that inevitably spring up in any discussion regarding Biden and abortion. The worst points Biden defenders bring up are related to the separation of church and state. I want to talk about their arguments to explain