Recently the journal First Things republished an essay of mine which was originally published twenty-one years ago, called “The Illusion of Moral Neutrality.”  Neutralism is the doctrine that

I suggested in another post that if you already know how someone thinks of his group interests, then you can make a pretty good guess about what political views he may find tempting -- but it is a lot harder to guess how he is going to think of his group interests.

I can see why someone who has been reading the last several posts might think so.  I’ve been talking about the motives people have to adopt the opinions they do, and I’ve connected these motives with the groups that they belong to.  Isn’t that just the Marxist theory that ideology is a reflection of class?

People who study bias in mainstream political reporting sometimes reach surprisingly different conclusions about whether there is any and what kind there is.  One obvious reason for the disparity is that in the study of human words, the instruments of measurement are human minds.  But another is that different kinds of bias may cut across each other; the

In case you are just joining in:

Human beings naturally desire to know the truth.  I don’t think this longing can be eradicated, but in the short run it may be far from obvious, just because all sorts of other longings compete with it and may at any given moment be stronger.  Even so, reality has ways of revenging itself upon beliefs that contradict it.  But these wheels too grind slowl

Why are intellectuals such conformists?

I closed last week’s post with the remark that “anything can be argued, yes, but at some point the guns should fall silent.”  At some point the argument should rest. 

“Any of this could be argued,” he said.  And of course he was right.

About this time last year, I received a letter from a university student undergoing his first spiritual crisis.  Just as he had rediscovered his faith, this awakening faith had been shaken by dread about the world.