On Britain’s Possible Accession after Seceding from the Union

Secession is a nasty business. Both Britain and South Carolina learned that lesson. Whereas the American member-state failed to secede from the U.S., Britain succeeded in seceding from the E.U. The parallelism presented here is no accident, for just as the U.S. federal system has been charactered by dual sovereignty—both the Union and the members having at least some governmental sovereignty—so too does the E.U.’s federal system. In deciding whether or not they want Britain to become an E.U. state again, the British ought to keep this fact in mind. 

The full essay is at "On Britain’s Possible Accession after Seceding from the Union."

Russian Patriarch Kirill: A Case of Religion Overreaching

The political separation of “Church and State” in U.S. constitutional law, a doctrine that is of jurisprudence (judicial decision) rather than theology and thus does not straddle and therefore demarcate the political and religious domains as qualitatively distinct from a neutral standpoint. Furthermore, the question of what makes the religious domain distinct (and unique) from all others is the pole from which a religious functionary’s (or religionist) leap into the political garden from the Garden of Eden can be detected. The trouble worsens if the criteria from one domain in imposed and overlaid in the overreaching into another domain, as if the criteria that is determinative in one domain were valid in another. In fact, the eclipsing itself of the other’s own criteria on their own “turf” is unethical. The legitimate sovereignty of a domain’s own criteria in that domain over criteria indigenous to other domains yet superimposed renders any supervening overreaching as both erroneous—as in going off-sides in football (soccer)—and unethical because the criteria indigenous to a given domain should not be disrespected within their own domain. In other words, encroaching is presumptuous. If these ideas strike the reader as novel, even strange perhaps, then I am keeping within the confines of my mission in writing, as I look to a new dawn in which the ideational tyranny of hitherto reigning yet questionable assumptions ist zerstört because they have been discredited, which is not to say that every extant assumption should be eviscerated and expunged for lack of substance. Unfortunately, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, went out on a tree limb, far from his religious tree’s trunk, by formulating and spreading “revisionist propaganda to justify the war in Ukraine” while the invasion was underway.[1] The history and legitimacy of a bygone Russian empire (not the U.S.S.R.) properly belong to the political rather than to the religious domain. Being schooled in theology does not give even a high religious functionary the knowledge on which to presume to be an expert in political history and international relations. The resentment in the E.U. and U.S. at the patriarch’s intrusion into a domain that is not an extension of the religious domain was not merely from opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also from an intuitive sense that the domains of religion/theology and politics/government are distinct and thus require different knowledge-sets and have their own respective criteria and distinctiveness.

The full essay is at "Russian Patriarch Kirill."

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Oil, Cod, Kirill: Friction Points Emerge in New E.U. Sanctions Against Russia,” Euronews.com, 26 June, 2026.

The E.U.’s Immigration “ICE”: The Pros and Cons of State Implementation

On 1 June, 2026, the E.U.’s two legislative chambers agreed informally on text for a law called Return Regulation, which is oriented to facilitating the return of illegal aliens to their respective countries. Both The European Council, the “upper chamber,” and the European Parliament, the “lower” legislative “chamber” (roughly corresponding to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, respectively) worked in what in American parlance is called a Congressional reconciliation or conference committee to agree to text enabling state police to enter the domiciles of illegal immigrants and state governments to set up detention centers outside of the European Union. That the federal law relegates implementation to the states illustrates just how different E.U. federalism differs from U.S. federalism even though both systems are “modern” rather than confederal in that governmental sovereignty in both unions is split between the federal and state levels. Even though the E.U. after thirty years was like the U.S. after its first thirty years in that most of that sovereignty was at the state level, the use of state governments to implement a federal law differentiates the European federal system from the American one. Both advantages and disadvantages go with leaving implementation largely up to the states.

The full essay is at "The E.U.'s Immigration 'ICE'."

California and Florida: Different Political Cultures in the U.S.

As evinced by Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney likening a planned referendum on whether Alberta should vote to separate from the rest of Canada to “Brexit,” in which Britain seceded from the E.U., as if the UK in the European Union were equivalent to Alberta in Canada, political category mistakes can run rampant without being detected as such. Referring to the referendum in the province, Carney said, “That is a very dangerous bluff.” He was “pointing to the turmoil that followed the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union.”[1] The implied false equivalence of Canada and the E.U., as if the former too had been formed out of countries, is as incorrect as that which Carney was more directly assuming between Alberta and Britain. A region of a country, even if the latter has a federal system, is not equivalent to a country that joins a political union such as the E.U. and U.S. That Britain was once the host kingdom in the British Empire, and thus equivalent to other members of the empire, including Ireland and Virginia, does not mean that the UK as a state in the E.U. was equivalent to the latter, or to other political unions consisting of early-modern-scale countries.

The full essay is at "California and Florida."

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1. Mike Blanchfield and Sue Allan, “Carney Warms Alberta Not to Pull a “Brexit,” Politico, May 25, 2026.

On Religion and Public Policy: Pope Leo on Dumping

The Terra dei Fuochi, or “land of fires,” is a region in southern Italy where “decades of illegal dumping, burying and burning of waste” had been devastating by the time Pope Leo paid Acerra a visit in May, 2026.[1] Lest visual images of hell’s fires reminiscent of Jonathan Edwards’ sermons come to mind, the devastation was squarely in the this-worldly domain of public policy. The pope’s speech can thus be viewed as an over-reach from the standpoint of his native fauna—the sui generis domain of religion, whose referent transcends not only the limits of cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion), but also Creation itself![2]

The full essay is at "On Religion and Public Policy."

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1. Fortunato Pinto, “Pope Leo XIV Visits Southern Italy’s ‘Land of Fires’,” Euronews.com, 23 May, 2026.
2. I am borrowing here from Pseudo-Dionysius, a sixth-century Christian theologian, who wrote on what I would call God’s radical transcendence. Relatedly, God has been thought of as being wholly other. In both of these characterizations, it follows that the domain of religion is not only distinct from every other domain, but also unique.

Religion and Politics: On the Catholic Church’s Just War Theory

In the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as an idealist, even other-worldly, from the standpoint of the political domain. To be sure, he knows how to alienate the Temple hierarchy enough to be put to death, but he stays clear of the Zealots in their militaristic rebelliousness against the Roman occupation. Give what it Caesar’s unto Caesar. The just-war theory developed by Augustine and Aquinas seeks to bring that gap—to make the idealist of the Gospels more relevant practically to the politics of international relations. To be sure, Jesus’s refusal to join the Zealots—symbolized by Jesus including Romans among those whom he heals—could be used to argue convincingly that attention to compassion for one’s enemy makes impossible even any just war. Jesus is just as idealistic in the story of the rich man who will not give up his wealth to follow Jesus—it is harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man (who will not give up his wealth to follow God) to enter the Kingdom of God, whose very substance spiritually is epitomized by compassion to one’s enemies, according to the American theologian, Samuel Hopkins. So, Pope Leo was on solid ground in April, 2026 in the midst of the U.S.-Iran War when he emphatically insisted that Jesus would oppose any war—not just any unjust one—but where does that leave the Catholic Church’s just war theory as promulgated by two theological giants, Augustine and Aquinas?

The full essay is at "Religion and Politics."

E.U. States and US Economies Compared Economically

Even in reporting and analyzing seemingly-objective economic data for comparative purposes, political ideology can creep in if that instinctual urge is powerful enough. Even in comparisons of political entities that are on the same level (e.g., city, region/province, kingdom, empire), “word-games” can be used to suggest that the republics being compared are on different political levels. The use of linguistic subterfuge is, I submit, underhanded and based on a stubborn refusal to admit to oneself that the two or more political entities being compared are indeed on the same level, rather than one being higher than the other. In the case of comparing GDP and GDP per capita between E.U. and U.S. states, the very fact that the states are being compared to each other, rather than a state in one union to another union (as if a state in one political union were equivalent to another union of states—a category mistake to be sure!), means that the respective states are in fact equivalent even though different labels are used according to whether a given state is in one union or another. In arguing these points, I shall juxtaposition the respective labels to highlight the absurdity of using different labels for ideological purposes.

The full essay is at "E.U. States and U.S. Economies Compared Economically."

E.U. Statehood for Sovereign Countries

Even as the E.U. struggled to come up with foreign policies on Gaza, Ukraine, and Iran in March, 2026, the union must have been cogent enough then for the Icelandic government to set a date at the end of the summer to have a referendum on whether to seek statehood. The term for this is accession, not merger, for an empire-scale union such as the U.S. or E.U. contains semi-sovereign states rather than co-scale and co-equal “partners.” By implication, to liken a state in one such union to another entire union is to make a category mistake that can be thought of in historical terms as making the claim that a kingdom is equivalent to an empire (of kingdoms). Both the E.U. and U.S. are federations composed of early-modern scale kingdoms and republics.[1] This is not so in the cases of Mexico and Canada. In fact, the U.S. has an open invitation for Canada’s accession (rather than merger).[2] People who presume that it was arrogant for the U.S. founders to invite Canada to accede as a state forget that the U.S. was formed by sovereign countries that became semi-sovereign states.

The full essay is at "E.U. Statehood for Sovereign Countries."

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1. See Skip Worden, British Colonies Forge an American Empire: A Basis for Trans-Atlantic Comparisons (Seattle: Amazon, 2017)
2. Because Canada has expanded West since the 18^th century, Canada would most likely accede as three or four U.S. states rather than just one.

Religious Liturgy and the Wholly Other

In the Zhuangzi, how can Zhuangzi possibly know that the fish are happy? To know what it is like to be a bat, a person must be a bat. This is not to say that we disagree with bats. Sonar represents the “sheer otherness” of a bat. In Christianity, how does eternal joy and bliss differ from happiness? Happiness is not a theological concept. There are different kinds of experience, and it follows that they have different kinds of truth-claims. To treat every such claim as the same kind of thing is premised on conflating domains of human experience that are qualitatively different. I contend that the domain of religion is both distinct and unique. Our ordinary ways of describing the world and even ourselves are not well-suited to our endeavors in the domain of religion.

The full essay is at "Religious Liturgy and the Wholly Other."

Iran’s Theocracy: An Uneasy Fusion of Religion and Political Economy

As mass protests erupted in Iran during the second week of January, 2026, Iran’s theocracy was on edge. That the protests stemmed from the dire economic conditions facing the people amid staggering inflation, including on basic food staples, rather than from foreign affairs, raises the question of whether religious clergy, including the “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are competent in making economic policy. Without the ongoing political pressure that can come from constituents in a representative democracy, or republic, it is no surprise that the protests in Iran quickly became mass riots. In other words, bad economic policy by religious clerics in power in an autocracy can easily result in popular protests abruptly erupting into rioting. The overreaching of functionaries based in the domain of religion into politics (including economic policy), such that the distinctiveness of the two domains is ignored or obfuscated, can be distinguished from the problems that go with autocracy.

The full essay is at "Iran's Theocracy."

An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church

Mixing religion and politics can be a dangerous business, especially if done from the pulpit and backed up by fully-weaponized police poised in a worship space at the laity in the pews, and from the front so the congregants know they are being intensely watched even as the words, “Peace on earth” are shown on the big screen directly above one of the uniformed police employees. To my utter astonishment, I encountered just this scenario when I visited a large Presbyterian church in the U.S. early in 2026. A Christian who has read the Gospels might look askance at the weaponized, uniformed police in the sanctuary who were facing the people from near the front, and the television cameramen who were standing on the stage even very close to the altar, and think of Jesus castigating the money-changers and sacrifice-animal sellers operating inside the temple. The modern equivalent to the greedy businessmen in the temple is the power-tripping, weaponized police officer staring down congregants in a sanctuary even while the people are worshipping God. To see people worshipping the prince of peace while a fully-weaponized policewoman looks directly at the worshippers from just left of the stage in front—staring at the people—is surreal. True Christianity cannot thrive in such a hostile environment. Lest any members of that Presbyterian church might consider complaining about the obvious hypocrisy, the pastor’s sermon could easily be interpreted as a warning against complaining, not just about the church, but also, and even more troubling, the government.

The full essay is at "An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church."

Statehood for Canada: Hardly a Merger

The U.S. Constitution includes an open invitation for the accession of Canada into the U.S. as a state. The invitation was made before Canada spread across from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. So, were Canadians to seek statehood in the American union of states (i.e., the U.S.A.), they would have a good argument for Canada being split in to a few states rather than just one. This is qualitatively different than a “merger” between the two countries; the latter ideological conjecture is predicated on a category mistake. Such a mistake would say, for example, that Singapore and China are of the same genus politically even though the former is a city-state and the latter is on the (early modern) empire-scale. Just because both Singapore and China have foreign policies and are member-countries of the UN does not mean that a city-state is to be treated more generally as if it were the same as an empire. By “empire,” I am referring to China itself, rather than any territories it might have beyond mainland China. The Qing emperor Kangzi expanded mainland China to include some central Asian kingdoms, thus making China an empire (of kingdom-level/scale subunits). Similarly, the U.S., as well as the E.U., are empire-scale/level polities of (kingdom-level) polities, whereas Canada does not have enough such polities to qualify as being on the empire-scale, for an empire contains many kingdom-level polities.

The full essay is at "Statehood for Canada."

The E.U. as a Bystander on the Global Stage: A Self-Inflicted Wound

Why has the E.U. been sidelined amid the military tensions in the Middle East? The answer lies with the E.U.’s federal system, rather than the size of its economy or of its population. The E.U. certainly could have more geopolitical sway abroad were it not for a vulnerability being exploited within its own federal system. The vulnerability stems from a refusal by some state officials to recognize and respect the qualitative and quantitative differences between the federal and the state levels of the E.U. Specifically, when the governor (i.e., chief executive and/or head of state) of a state operates as if a federal-level official, especially that of a federal president, the authority of the actual federal president is undercut, hence weakening that person’s ability to convince the heads of foreign governments to include the E.U. president or foreign minister in multilateral negotiations centered on the Middle East, for example. Even unconsciously, foreign leaders may say to themselves, why should we respect the president of the E.U. if she is so easily upstaged by the leader of an E.U. state who is acting as if he were president of the European Commission?  To speak with one voice, and to be able to speak for the E.U. rather than just one state thereof, an E.U. official must be the speaker. Macron of the E.U. state of France cannot speak for the E.U., but Von der Leyen could, provided her space is respected by the governors of the states. This is not to say that this is the only reason why the E.U. has been sidelined from negotiations on Middle East warfare; rather, my contention is that this reason is typically overlooked due to the Euroskeptic ideological delusion that the E.U. does not have a federal system of government even though since 1993, governmental sovereignty has indeed been split between the states and the Union. Perhaps the underlying question here is whether continuing to clutch at the anti-federalist ideology is worth the E.U. continuing to be weakened unnecessarily from within, and thus sidelined from international negotiations that do not center on Europe. Making such blind-spots transparent is indeed a valuable occupation, even if it can be infuriating to people whose interests and ideology are served best if societies look the other way.

The full essay is at "The E.U. as a Bystander on the Global Stage." 

MIT: A University or a Government?

On the very same day in which Harvard’s president received a standing ovation during the university’s graduation ceremony in Harvard Yard and emphasized verbally that students from all around the world come to Harvard to study—U.S. President Trump having recently ordered Harvard’s international students either to transfer from Harvard or be sent home—MIT’s president barred the 2025 class president from attending her graduation ceremony on the next day because of her speech denouncing Israel’s decimation of Gaza in violation of international human-rights law. Whether extermination or genocide, that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had issued arrest warrants for Israel’s sitting prime minister and a former defense minister should be enough for MIT’s senior officials to recognize that speaking on behalf of human rights and against mass carnage and intentional starvation is laudatory rather than horrendous. Even with the political pressure that must have been coming the federal president, it was possible to resist such pressure, which is why Harvard’s graduates gave the president of Harvard a standing ovation of support. Sometimes international affairs really are simple. Opposing Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza is not only morally good; doing so is a duty. After all (but sadly not after all), Israel’s military actions over 1.5 years had already resulted in whole cities being leveled and 1.2 million residents facing starvation. The policy of U.S. Government and the money of the American military-industrial companies, both of which were still aiding Israel’s military, was also ripe for moral criticism. In effect, MIT’s “academic” officials felt justified in taking the draconian step of barring the graduating-class student-president from the campus on the day of graduation because she had spoken out for human rights. There surely are tough decisions in life given how subjective and even multivariate human judgment is, but condemning and even bypassing MIT in the wake of that institution’s highest officials barring the student from even receiving her diploma in the graduation ceremony even though her family had come to see it is not a difficult decision to reach. While dwarfed by the coldness of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, “heartless” is not an adjective that a university’s top officials want applied to them or a university itself, especially in regard to students on the cusp of being alumni with great earning, and thus donating, potential.

The full essay is at "MIT: A University or a Government?"

The Hindu Festival of Holi: Polytheism in Practice

On March 14, 2025, “(m)illions of people in South Asia celebrated Holi, the Hindu festival of colors . . . by smearing each other with brightly colored powder, dancing to festive music and feasting on traditional sweets prepared for the occasion.”[1] Lest the various eats and drinks be dismissed for analytical purposes as trivial, a particular kind of drink or food that is traditional can have religious significance by reflecting Hinduism as a polytheistic rather than a monotheist religion. Whereas monotheism allows for only one deity, etymologically mono theos, a polytheist religion has more than one deity, even if one is deemed to be superior over the others.

The full essay is at "The Hindu Festival of Holi."

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1. “Millions of  People Celebrate Holi, the Hindu Festival of Colors,” The Associated Press, March 14, 2025.

Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.

It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.

The full essay is at "Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S."

Democracy Breached: Georgia Unfit for E.U. Statehood

On December 14, 2024, Mikheil Kavelashvili became the president of Georgia, further cementing the Georgian Dream Party’s grip on power at the expense of the sovereign state’s accession as a semi-sovereign E.U. state. From the standpoint of representative democracy, what a contrast with the U.S. state of Georgia. The Georgian Dream Party implicitly conflated the qualitative difference between the U.S. and state-scale polities by misappropriating the term, Electoral College, which elects the U.S. President. There is a reason why that College does not apply at the state level, yet in its haste to consolidate power in 2017, the Georgian Dream Party replaced direct presidential elections with an Electoral College, which the party could control. Sure enough, Kavelashvili was the only candidate in 2024, and he got the votes of 224 of the 225 electors who were present for the vote.

The full essay is at "Democracy Breached."

Territorial Economic Inequality: On the Impact of Ideological Category-Mistakes

Why do some countries have more inequality in terms of wealth or economic development, whether between big cities and urban areas, or just from region to region, than do other countries? I contend that in comparing the internals of one state/country to those of another, as much “all else equal” should be satisfied as possible. This can be accomplished to a large extent by resisting the error, or temptation, to make category mistakes, such as in comparing Singapore with China—a city-state to an empire-scale country—or in likening an E.U. state to the entire U.S. European scholars of comparative politics tend to make this category mistake, and non-European scholars are so used to the ideological aggrandizement that they do not typically even recognize the category mistake of treating an early-modern(rather than Medieval) kingdom-scale state of an empire-scale federal union as equivalent to another such union, as if a state in one such union, or a comparable sovereign state, were itself an empire-scale union. Resisting the ideologically-driven urge to begin with a category mistake would do wonders in studying comparative politics and political economy and providing more accurate and beneficial conclusions and recommendations.

The full essay is at "Economic Inequality."

Faith Seeking Understanding: On Religious Experience

On October 24, 2024, Pope Francis released his encyclical, Dilexit Nos (“He Loved Us), on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the letter, he recounts “Saint Gertrude of Helfta, a Cisterian nun, tells of a time in prayer when she reclined her head on the heart of Christ and heard it beating.”[1] She wondered why the Gospel of John does not describe a similar spiritual experience, and concluded that “the sweet sound of those heartbeats has been reserved for modern times, so that, hearing them, our aging and lukewarm world may be renewed in the love of Christ.”[2] The pope concludes in the letter that this might hold for our times too. I contend that Gertrud’s spirituality can speak to the current modern age, in which that of Gertrud—the thirteenth century—hardly seems modern, but not in terms of focusing on Jesus’ resurrected heart; instead, Gertrud can point us beyond the limits of marital-union imagery with Jesus to experience that transcends the use of imagery that may say more about us and our world than that which transcends even the limits of the human imagination. Turning to the criticisms of Gertrud’s spirituality (and intelligence) by Thomas Merton and William James, I intend to salvage Gertrud in order to uncover her spiritual maturity.

The full essay is at "Faith Seeking Understanding."

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1. Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos, October 24, 2024, para. 98.
2. Ibid.

A Critique of the Corporate Legal Persons Doctrine: The Case of Corporate Taxation

In his commentary in The Wall Street Journal in 2010, Michael Boskin went over the disadvantages in levying an income tax on corporations. Within his argument, he observes, “Of course, the corporation is a legal entity; only people pay taxes.”[1]  In so doing, he transcended, if only for a moment, his own approach that was oriented simply to giving the pros and cons of corporate taxation.  His observation is significant, and it gives us a launching pad of sorts by which we can approach the corporate income tax as a itself as a concept, rather than simply assessing its utility. In short, corporate taxation is an oxymoron if only humans pay tax. In fact, we can conclude from Boskin's remark that the doctrine that corporations are legal persons has been incorrectly construed.

The full essay is at "A Critique of the Corporate Legal Persons Doctrine." 

1. Michael Boskin, "Time to Junk the Corporate Tax," The Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2010.