My point today is a very controversial one–increasingly, Americans are beginning to agree with Osama bin Laden. This is not to say that Americans are beginning to agree with terrorism or the use of indiscriminate violence–with the exception of a few mass shooters, we’re still generally quite opposed to all of that. No, we’re still very much opposed to terrorism; what we’re beginning to agree with are bin Laden’s ends, not his means. I suspect many readers are resistant to that conclusion, so I must elaborate and defend it.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
The Many Defeats of the Schools
A friend of mine recently directed me to an obscure old piece from The Atlantic published in 1939, entitled “The Defeat of the Schools” by James L. Mursell. I find the piece fascinating in no small part because the critique it makes of American school systems is more or less synonymous with the modern critique. All of which raises an interesting question–is the perceived decline in educational standards overestimated, or has it been going on for much longer than most people think?
Better Never to Have Been?
I have recently finished reading a fascinating and thought-provoking book by political theorist David Benatar, entitled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. In this book, Benatar makes a rather unconventional argument–that to bring someone into existence is to harm that person, and that it is consequently generally wrong to have children, because to have children is to harm them. While I found Benatar’s argument most interesting, I ultimately found it unpersuasive. Here’s why.
The Inevitability of Cooperation
I’ve been thinking lately about why we cooperate with each other–why we form communities and states. The typical Hobbesian answer to this question is that we cooperate in order to protect ourselves from violence. There is truth in that answer, but security concerns, while a primary motivator for cooperation, are not the only motivator. This is important, because there are those who oppose cooperative institutions on the grounds that a world without cooperative institutions isn’t as dangerous as Hobbesians commonly believe, suggesting we should become total individualists (e.g. anarchists, transcendentalists, etc.).
Why Do States Kill Civilians?
In recent days, there’s been much talk of how the Syrian government is killing civilians in Syria. Most people have been inclined to view this as manifest evidence that the Syrian government is run by malevolent and/or insane individuals. I think this response is too quick and too dismissive. Throughout history, states have often killed civilians. The individuals who give the orders that civilians be killed are not all uniformly evil or crazy. There is some purpose that states seek to achieve by targeting civilians, and today I wish to shed some light on what that purpose is.
Benjamin Studebaker 