This little man’s bible, his instrument of hatred and torture, his upside-down roadmap to hellfire, was the word of his god. No doubt his slavery to it already had him living a bleak and dismal living hell, and he is to be pitied for that.
US and British Privatisation and Financialisation of War
In recent decades the United States has forced a distinction between “private military contractors” and hired mercenaries that is both a legal fiction and more a work of art than law.
Someone Called Me A Cynic
I’m thinking now that Coco was right. I am a cynic, but this takes nothing from my optimism. The opposite of optimism is pessimism, and I am not a pessimist – however much the world gives us cause to abandon all hope.
Fatal Foetal Abnormality and the Eighth Amendment
There is a case to be made that in the eventuality of a fatal abnormality the foetus may be considered not an “unborn” for the purposes of the eighth amendment, or that if considered an “unborn” then its right to life may be presumed unengaged as it has no real prospect of life outside the womb.
Thoughts on the Eighth Amendment
Follow @RPJblog Abortion continues to be a highly emotive topic in Irish politics and public life. The campaign to repeal the eighth amendment to the Irish Constitution has brought the question of abortion in the state back to the centre of public debate, and, as is to be expected, tempers on both sides of the … Continue reading Thoughts on the Eighth Amendment
Rallying Faith in the Culture War
It is now ‘open season’ on any and all forms of religion in culture, in the academy, in the media, and in political life. A new atheism; now the social default, less prepared to engage with the philosophical and theological grammar of religious thought than its classical predecessor, has constructed walls to exclude as much religious expression as it can from the marketplace.
‘Moralising’ and the Fight for Women in Prostitution
The argument that decriminalising the sale and purchase of sex as an interim measure until the socio-economic causes of prostitution have been addressed is nothing more than a messianic dream.
Anarcho-Capitalists: Free Market Fanatics or Fantasists?
Capitalism’s revolution has not yet come into full flower. It has not quite reached its desired end. When in 1681, when the bourgeois state was still on the future horizon, Louis XIV’s powerful finance minister asked the merchants of France how the king might best help them, M. Le Gendre stated with beautiful prescience the destiny of Capitalism in saying: “Laissez-nous faire” (“Let us be”).
Random Public Journal 