Assassins’ Code

  Political violence is pretty much a daily feature of today’s news cycle. Assassins are guaranteed their fifteen minutes of fame. But something more than notoriety is happening in the wake of political violence today. Shoot at a pro-life speaker on a college campus, a group...
Read More →

Faces on a Train

  I often commute to Tokyo for work. There are many train lines in Japan, and in the capital, they weave and tangle like cat’s-cradle strings. Some evenings, on the long ride home, my train ends up running parallel for a few moments with some other train on some other track...
Read More →

Rest in Power

  In his prime, professional wrestling legend Hulk Hogan was one of the most recognizable strongmen on the planet. His recent passing made national news even in Japan, where he was beloved by generations of fans. As a world-famous muscle-flexer and, in his last year,...
Read More →

As If

  The name Hans Vaihinger is virtually unknown today, but we Americans very much live in his world. Vaihinger, a German philosopher, created a minor sensation more than a century ago with the publication in 1911 of The Philosophy of ‘As If’ (the English translation, The...
Read More →

Anti-Natalism: Old or New?

  On the morning of Saturday, May 17, a bomb went off outside the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California. The bomber, a twenty-five-year-old man named Guy Edward Bartkus, was killed in the blast. Four other people were injured. News...
Read More →

Life Pro 

  Prolifers care about babies in the womb, of course. That’s part of what being pro-life is all about. But there’s something you notice when you spend time in the pro-life movement: Pro-life people are good at what comes after birth, too. So many of the prolifers I know are...
Read More →

The One and the Many

  There are two ways in which to think about humanity: as unique human persons or as aggregate masses. When we humans start to speak of groups of people, it almost always leads to dismissing each group member’s humanity, even if only slightly. “Fans of that football team...
Read More →

The Singularity Is a Mirror

Computer scientist Ray Kurzweil’s 2005 book The Singularity Is Near was a landmark in technological thought. In that book, Kurzweil summed up the progress of computer and other forms of technology in order to formulate a vision for the future of human beings in an increasingly...
Read More →

Eugenics Then and Now

  I have been reading Linda Royall’s 2023 book Sacrifice, in which the investigative journalist details Margaret Sanger’s deep and revolting entanglements with eugenics, racism, Nazi ideology, and population control. Royall also explains how Sanger biographer (and devoted...
Read More →

Twinned Injustices

  Just a few days into his newly minted presidency, Donald Trump, amid a flurry of executive orders, pardoned twenty-three pro-life prisoners of conscience. With a few strokes of a pen, Trump freed Bevelyn Beatty Williams, a wife and mother from Tennessee; Eva Edl, a...
Read More →