The UN: Climate Change as a Health Emergency

Hitherto, climate change had been characterized primarily as a matter of science and political economy wherein the latter was lagging behind the former. As the ongoing accumulating of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans were finally having a significant impact on the planet and us in the mid-2020s, breaking the grip of the oil industry and the related consumer demand for fossil-fuel energy proved to be too much for the UN’s annual “COP” summits because any agreements at them were nonbinding on governments. So at the commencement of the COP31 summit on November 9, 2026, the UN’s Climate Change Executive Secretary adroitly shifted the characterization of climate change to one of health, and more specifically healthcare systems—something presumably more manageable. Unfortunately, the focus on health put symptoms and effects ahead of addressing the causes of global warming.

The full essay is at "The UN: Climate Change as a Health Emergency."

Freedom

Freedom is so often applied in the political and economic domains in terms of external freedom, such as in speech or action—things that a state can regulate, a boss can forbid, and a religious cleric can excoriate—that internal freedom is often overlooked. We live in a collectivist world of states, businesses, universities, and religious organizations so it is easy to overlook interior freedom. In viewing ourselves in terms of groups, we are subject to the artificial constraints of group-think. Individualism is often conflated with lawlessness and licentiousness. Rather than tread over the tired individualism versus collectivism dichotomy, however, the interior of the mind, and in particular the sort of freedom that is possible therein, can be distinguished and yet related to exterior freedom that tends to be characterized by the constraints presented by political, economic, cultural, and religious systems in which we live. I contend that expanding interior freedom can expand political freedom in a way that strengthens democracy rather than results in anarchy. 

The full essay is at "Freedom."

On the Impact of an Electoral Landslide: The 2026 U.S. Congressional Election

Amid all the fanfare of an exciting election in which the opposition, riding an electoral “wave,” gains more (or even complete) control in a legislature, the tendency of an electorate is to assume that everything will change. Even utopian hopes can take wing. The sheer inertia of any political status quo is easily overlooked until reality sets back in as the ascendent group gets to work in a legislative capacity. Clipping the wings of a party that has enjoyed unfettered power does not necessarily mean that the opposition will be able to change existing governmental policy and laws rather than merely act as a stronger check on what had been perceived as the excesses of the other party when it was in power. To be sure, the power of an electorate (the People) to trigger such a check by voting for opposition candidates is a great benefit of representative democracy and is worthy of admiration. Imagine the alternative:  a party whose officeholders could go on and on, even to an extreme, even though most of the electorate objects and yet has no way to put in place replacements wo could counter the hitherto dominant party. This scenario does not have to be imagined; just look at countries such as North Korea, Russia, and China. Lest the accolades of democracy be oversold, the impact legislatively and in terms of U.S. policies, especially foreign policy, of the “blue wave” in the 2026 congressional election in the U.S. should not be overstated.

The full essay is at "On the Impact of an Electoral Landslide."

North Korea and the E.U. on Human Rights

In the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, Jesus uses the metaphor of a mere sliver of wood in another person’s eye being objected to by a person who has an entire plank in one’s own eye to criticize the hypocrisy that can occur with self-righteousness.[1] In international relations, it is much easier to see abuses of human rights in another country than in one’s own. Mixing metaphors, it can be said that people in glass houses should not throw stones because one may come back to bite. Generalizing from particular abuses of human rights, the refusal of national governments to give up some governmental sovereignty so an assembly “with teeth” could go in and arrest abusers within a country in violation of protecting its residents’ human rights means that we are all guilty of insufficient political action. The UN pales next to such an assembly, yet, at least as of 2026, it is the best we have.

The full essay is at "North Korea and the E.U. on Human Rights."

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1. See Matt. 7:3-5 and Luke 6:41.

Retail-Speak American Style

Hidden or overshadowed by U.S. President Trump’s coined term, fake news, American retail’s utterly contrived, and thus fake jargon went unscathed by consumers in first few decades of the twentieth century. Even nonverbally acknowledging the verbiage spewed out by employees and even front-line managers in a retail store or coffee shop as if the jargon were legitimate subtly enables and thus extenuates the sordid trend. Were enough customers to question and even object to the “corporate correct” lines, perhaps the feedback would move its way up managerial hierarchies and result in cleaner, more transparent conversation at the store level. To the extent that business culture pervades a society, changes are greater that the verbal artifice will be received as if it were real, and thus a valid way of communicating. Perhaps the more general question concerns the extent to which linguistic artifice saturates American culture and has even come to be viewed as genuine. The subtle influence of business culture in America may be vastly overlooked.

The full essay is at "Retail-Speak American Style."

Foreign Policy Alignment in E.U. Enlargement

Threating the E.U. or U.S. as a club and thus as having members rather than states is as erroneous as it is arrogant. Even though the E.U. states are members of the European Council and the U.S. states are members of the U.S. Senate because both federal bodies represent states rather than federal or state citizens, nether the U.S. nor the E.U. has members per se; rather both unions have states because those unions have federal systems. Nor is either political union a “bloc,” as the latter is actually a temporary group of sovereign countries rather than a federal government of semi-sovereign states or even just an alliance. Linguistic semantics matter because they can impact expectations; less is expected of a bloc than a federal union of states. For one thing, the latter, which is theoretically permanent, involves more of a bonding between the polities. To be united, states cannot not be so opposed to each other that passing federal law and regulations faces insurmountable ideological opposition in the chambers in which the states are represented and thus are the members, especially if each one wields a veto! Two words: Viktor Orban. The E.U. is justified, therefore, in insisting on general agreement with the E.U.’s foreign and military policies before approving the accession of a candidate state.  

The full essay is at "Foreign Policy Alignment in E.U. Enlargement."

The Foreigner: Justice as Vengeance

The human urge to exact vengeance as if the resulting pain suffered by the culprit(s) were equivalent to that (or whom) is lost being restored—an equivalence that Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes as strange—is perhaps integral to human nature; the instinct may even be in our DNA and activated in the reptilian area of the human brain. Compassion to enemies flies in the face of that facet of our nature, yet it is arguably only from justice as love as universal (rather than convenient) benevolence, rather than from justice through vengeance, that full restorative satisfaction after having suffered a loss caused by another person is possible. We find this instinct to exact vengeance idealized in the film, The Foreigner (2017). Rarely is vengeance so perfectly fulfilled as it is in that fictional story. Yet the idyllic ending is deceiving, for even such fulfilment as the protagonist feels after having exacted revenge is not wholly restorative. More realistically, people tend to go overboard in refusing to delimit vengeful acts to fit the respective crimes/losses. Hence the Biblical attempt to assign vengeance to God, which is also problematic.

The full essay is at "The Foreigner." 

The E.U. on Negotiating Britain’s Secession: Traumatized Officials

As the war between the U.S.A. and C.S.A. (1861-1865) attests, the secession of a state from a political union in which governmental sovereignty is “dual” (i.e., both the union and the states are vested with it, such that it is divided, albeit not evenly) can be arduous. Although a “velvet” secession sans warfare, the secession of the state of Britain (UK) from the E.U. required lengthy and painstaking negotiations. In the case of a union of states, something more than integration occurs not only economically, but also politically. Anti-federalist rhetoric, such as in referring to the E.U. (or U.S.) as a “bloc” with “members,” and even with potential “associate members,” does absolutely nothing to counter the political reality of federalism wherein governmental sovereignty resides both with the union itself and the state governments. Officials in the E.U.’s Commission were prudent, therefore, in being hesitant regarding the possible re-accession of Britain as an E.U. state as talk on that possibility swirled in Britain in 2026 just after Andy Burnham became the prime minister and suggested that he would be open to a referendum. This occurred exactly a decade after the referendum on “Brexit” had passed and only six years after the actual secession. Between 2016 and the end of January, 2020, E.U. and British officials—federal and state, respectively—engaged in painstaking, even traumatic, negotiations. That this harsh characterization came from the E.U. side is consistent with my thesis that the vote in Britain to secede, or “exit,” from the E.U. was based on a rejection of the governmental sovereignty held by the E.U. rather than its states. E.U. officials would not have taken kindly to even the subtle suggestion that the E.U.’s portion of sovereignty did not really exist.

The full essay is at "The E.U. on Negotiating Britain's Secession."

Making AI Safe for Humanity: A Matter of Ethics or Religion?

AI, or models of computer machine-learning, may piggy-back on ongoing risks to humanity, such as from nuclear bombs, cyber-attacks, and biological weapons, including unleashing new pandemics, to render any one of them more likely. That firms in the private sector develop advanced models without a financial incentive to protect the public good exacerbates the risk. To be sure, tech-firm executives were sounding the alarm most significantly in 2026. However, in reaching out to religious scholars and clergy for insight on the ethics of AI in order to make the models ethical so their output would be only ethical, certain executives incorrectly conceived of religion in terms of ethics, and thus its criteria rather than those that are innate to religion. This category mistake could result in advice that results in unethical computer outputs.  Anthropic is a case in point.

 
The full essay is at "Making AI Safe for Humanity."

American Federalism: Idaho and Massachusetts on Guns

The proverbial expression, or retort, that the U.S. is not a France with a large back yard (i.e., simply more territory), or the equivalent—to say that the E.U. is not Texas with a large front yard—is oriented to the important difference between (early) modern empire-scale unions and states (i.e., polities) thereof. An empire is constituted by many (i.e., not just a few) polities that are culturally heterogenous (i.e., different from one another). Even though since at least 1871, Canada’s provinces have stretched across a continent, the number of provinces (10) does not meet the number qualification to be considered an empire even though Quebec and British Columbia are obviously very different culturally (including linguistically). In contrast, at 27 and 50 members, the E.U. and U.S. respectively qualify on both counts—interstate cultural/political diversity and the number of states. Even though the E.U.’s linguistic interstate diversity has greatly exceeded that which existed even in 2026 among the U.S. members, U.S. has its own dimensions of cultural difference that are palpable and salient between member-states, and particular pairs of states can even be said to be divergent on specific dimensions. It may even be that the E.U. states are more homogenous than are the U.S. states on such dimensions. For example, attitudes towards people having guns—including semi-automatic machine guns, so not just guns for hunting—differ between American states substantially and more so than between E.U. states.

The full essay is at "American Federalism."

The E.U. Investigates an Online Travel-Reservation Company: Consumer Protection in Hospitality

The case, or rationale, for government regulation and oversight of the “hospitality” industry (e.g., hotels, booking companies, etc.) is not merely made on the basis of monopoly or oligarchy in the industry at the expense of market competition, but also on issues concerning business ethics and managerial competence at not only hotel companies (as well as with franchisees), but also separate travel-reservation companies. The European Commission was therefore on solid ground in launching an investigation into a online travel-reservations company in 2026.

The full essay is at "The E.U. Investigates an Online Travel-Reservation Company."

Contact

In the fall of 2026, Chris Graney, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, argued that the universe of at least 2 trillion galaxies (according to a study in 2016 using the orbital Hubble Space Telescope) probably contains few, if any, planets capable of supporting intelligent life. This claim may come as a surprise, given the gargantuan number of possibly habitable exoplanets in the universe and the associated likelihood of alien life out there. The overlay of theology onto science, as if the latter’s criteria were nugatory and thus dismissible relative to religious doctrine, is problematic because the two domains are arguably distinct and even unique, even though they are related. Such a category mistake is highlighted in the film, Contact (1997), in which religious figures (who have related political roles in the White House) impose monotheist criteria in the selection of an astronaut for space travel, which is primarily a scientific enterprise.

The full essay is at "Contact."

U.S. Foreign Policy on Russia: On the Importance of an Educated Electorate

Shortly after the sudden and unexpected death of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior (and hawkish) U.S. senator, on 11 July 2026, the Congress passed, and U.S. President Trump signed, the Graham Act, which is legislation that gives the federal president discretion in adding economic sanctions and higher tariffs to weaken Russia’s military machine by hurting Russia’s economy—especially its lucrative oil industry—because Russia was still invading Ukraine. By Columbus Day, however, President Trump and Russia’s President Putin had made a deal wherein Russia would sell 300,000 tons of diesel to the U.S. and global markets immediately, with an additional 500,000 tons in November and then one million more. President Trump, using his discretion as allowed in the Graham Act, “issued a broad sanctions waiver for Russian diesel until April 2027.”[1] Euronews reported at the time that this move was “raising concerns in Ukraine and among its allies,” most notably the E.U. and in its state capitals.[2] The fact that the deal undercut the Western strategy of pressuring Russia economically so it would withdrawal its military from Ukrainian territory means that the diesel sale and broader waiver did more than raise concerns in Europe. Zelensky was probably hitting his head against a wall in utter disbelief at one point. For his part, Putin, formerly head of the KGB in the U.S.S.R., may have been relieved, and dumbstruck, that the Americans could be such suckers. As is often the case in foreign policy, domestic politics play a role in the motivation of key actors on the world stage. President Trump was facing an upcoming Congressional election in early November and whether Trump’s Republican group would continue to control the U.S. House and U.S. Senate was preoccupying the president in October because if even just one of the two federal legislative chambers would be under the control of the Democratic group, Trump’s legislative will would be compromised at best in getting through Congress. Trump’s political calculus had a lot to do with his knowledge of his base—the voters who would be likely to vote for Republican candidates in November. That base is often a “black box” to many Americans and Europeans alike, and this impedes accurate analysis of Trump’s political calculus in making a deal with Putin that would be sure to anger government officials both in Ukraine and the E.U.

The full essay is at "U.S. Foreign Policy on Russia."

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU Decries ‘Concerning’ Trump-Putin Deak, Insists Sanctions on Russia Will Continue,” Euronews.com, 12 October 2026.
2. Ibid.

Political Wins as God’s Will

Albeit homo sapiens, which in Latin means the wise species of humans, we have a tendency to outdo ourselves on our petty, partisan perches in pontificating on God’s will, as if we know it even though we can merely believe in God, rather than know God, here defined as the Abrahamic deity—a supreme being within (immanent) and beyond (transcendent) Creation. This “beyondness” is of the sort that goes beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotions, and even intuition. Because God’s will is not based in Creation since God is the Creator, the matter of that will can only be a matter of belief rather than knowledge as far as we are concerned, and that belief must contend with the human discretion that is inevitable in interpreting scriptural passages, which, depending on the verse, may be literal, figurative, allegorical, or symbolic. Even within the Christian Trinity, only the Father knows when the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur. In the Gospel of Matthew (24:36), Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Does this mean that of the three persons (Latin) or manifestations (Greek) of the Christian deity, only the Father is omniscient (i.e., all-knowing: knows absolutely everything)? It would seem so. The Holy Spirit may come through the Son, but only the Father is omniscient, and thus the Godhead. In verse 34, Jesus has just said, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Even if “that day or hour” is up to the Father, while Jesus only knows that the Son will come on clouds to judge the living and the dead sometime within the lifetimes of the people to whom he is speaking, omniscience would require even the exact second to be known; otherwise, the knowledge is not complete (i.e., omni). That Jesus is wrong concerning his prediction does not mean that he is with sin; only that he is represented in the New Testament as being of the god-man type. Now, if Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew does not have complete knowledge of when the world will end at the final judgement by Christ himself, then human claims to know the contents of God’s will can safely be relegated as arrogance as if it were on stilts during a flood, for such presumption should be underwater rather than lording itself in pontificating to other mortals. With all this as context, the partisan rhetoric and genuine beliefs of the U.S. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, while he was campaigning in 2026 for Republican candidates for elected office in the U.S. House, can be situated and analyzed from well within the religious domain.

The full essay is at "Political Wins as God's Will."

Apocalypse Now

Imagine being an American soldier sent to Vietnam to fight the militarized Marxist Communists there. The Vietnam War provides many examples of such a plight. Now consider how much worse it would be to be sent into a seemingly constantly rainy, hot and humid jungle deep in Cambodia to assassinate an American colonel because he is a renegade Special Forces military officer who has gone insane. Just in case this is not dire enough, simply add in that he has the local village protecting their god with weapons. Surely safer secret military missions exist than to assassinate an insane former special-ops man with a small army of devotees. This is the central plot of the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed The Godfather earlier that decade. Behind the plot of Apocalypse Now is a dichotomy wherein human nature itself is bifurcated into a dichotomy of good and bad. This is interesting because some of the characters may fall in between, suggesting that human nature has a gray zone in which most of us live.

The full essay is at "Apocalypse Now."