I have decided to once a year permit myself to self-indulge in writing about the state of the blog near the date that marks the anniversary of my first post. I began this project on August 4, 2012, so that time has arrived. I promise I will only do this once a year. This is not the beginning of a long, slow slide into irrelevance and self-reflection.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
Americans Still Don’t Know What Sequestration Is
I haven’t been doing much writing about the US economy lately, in part because there’s been no substantive movement on the issue politically since sequestration went through. All we’ve gotten lately are some retread hopey changey speeches from Obama and threats of future government shutdowns from congressional republicans. Nonetheless, these are the first signs that we will soon be having more unproductive fights about the economy with potentially devastating consequences for growth, so I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled. And, lo and behold, I stumbled on a little poll from Gallup.
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Scar: The Lion Martin Luther King
Disney has made a lot of beloved animated films. All over the developed world, kids grow up with them. There is something that has long bothered me about them, however–they have long presented children with morally uncomplicated, black and white, hero versus villain narratives. In this way, these movies contribute to our moral socialization as children, normalizing deontological moral beliefs–the notion that actions are right or wrong in themselves, regardless of the outcomes they produce. There is also an anti-intellectual thread running through many of these films–the villain is typically a clever schemer, while the hero is typically an every-man who happens to have unusual physical abilities. Today I’d like to highlight this issue in our culture by taking the plot of the beloved film The Lion King and morally reconstructing it so as to make Scar sympathetic.
FOX v. Reza Aslan
Every once in a while, the hostility to intellectualism that is prevalent among certain sections of the wider public sneaks up behind you and smashes you over the head. As I watched FOX’s interview with Reza Aslan (no, not that Aslan), a scholar of religious sociology, I realized that not only was this one of those times, it was, perhaps, among the very worst of those times. In this instance, I was not merely being smashed over the head, I was being smashed over the head with something spiky.
Killing People for their Organs
Many people believe they have a knockdown objection to utilitarian moral theory. They argue that utilitarianism implies that it is morally permissible to kill people for their organs in order to save other people. They argue this conclusion is repugnant and obviously wrong, and that therefore utilitarianism must also be a repugnant, obviously wrong moral theory. Sophisticated critics attempt to explain why killing people for their organs is obviously wrong–they claim it uses people as a means to someone else’s ends. In this case, the people killed for their organs are said to be used as a means to the ends of those in need of transplants. As someone with strongly utilitarian leanings, it is important that I have a response to this case, so here goes.
Benjamin Studebaker 
