Category Archives: Civil Liberties

Published on
10 June 2013

Innocence, Surveillance and Our Perennial Dilemma

Posted in Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Legal Affairs, Liberty, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy, Public Policy, Religion

News that the United States government ordered the largest US communications company Verizon to hand over details of communications of all of its customers on a daily basis is as regrettable as it is shocking. That is to say, insofar as it is regrettable it is also shocking but it is not a complete surprise. […]

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Published on
10 April 2013

Welfare and the Winds of Change

Posted in Big Society, British Politics, Civil Liberties, Culture, Human Rights, Public Policy, Social Commentary

The strongest in society have a duty to support the weakest. As with any duty it is better that it be fulfilled voluntarily. In this instance this is by far the better course because such a duty frequently concerns the disposal of private property. But this duty is rarely fulfilled to the satisfaction of social […]

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Published on
5 April 2013

When Discussing Porn Sex-Ed. Should Start with Life

Posted in Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Marriage & Family, Moral Philosophy

Perhaps the only social phenomena that could be attributed solely to the internet over the last 20 years has been the meteoric rise in the use of pornography. Like all vices pornography is nothing new but the pervasiveness of it online has led to discussions of whether it should be filtered out (censored) at source […]

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Published on
20 March 2013

Press Freedom and Press Responsibility

Posted in Civil Liberties, Ethics in the Media, Freedom, Liberty, Public Policy

The Royal Charter being set up in the wake of the Leveson Report marks an end to a period of 300 years in which government did not regulate the press. It is unprecedented in this country’s democratic history and should therefore be approached with great care. One does not have to look far to find […]

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Published on
25 February 2013

The War on Drugs and Contemporary Moral Failure

Posted in British Politics, Civil Liberties, Philosophy, Religion

Increasingly we are told that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed, and the evidence for this is persuasive. In spite of the challenges of legalisation it is clear that criminalising everyone associated with the drugs trade is, in the words of one report, ‘as costly as it is ineffective’. Throughout history some people have sought […]

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Published on
22 November 2012

Religion, Secular Politics and Intelligible Values

Posted in Christianity, Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Human Rights, Liberty, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy, Religion, Social Commentary, Virtue

Religious experience is, for many sceptical or simply indifferent secularists, something unintelligible. The idea that there is a God who can become a man and forgive sins — even that there is such a thing as God or as sin — is for them unacceptable. Religious people must remember that this is no simple matter […]

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Published on
12 November 2012

We Need Saints in the Cabinet, not Vigilantes in the Newsroom

Posted in British Politics, Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Ethics in the Media, Liberty, Moral Philosophy

When Philip Schofield passed a list of alleged sexual abusers to David Cameron on camera it was clear the Prime Minister was not pleased. This was not a simple matter of the government or the Tory party facing charges of ‘honours for cash’ or of political ‘u-turns’. The possibility that senior members of the party […]

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Published on
1 October 2012

Strained Relations between ‘Christendom’ and the ‘Dar al-Islam’

Posted in Christianity, Civil Liberties, Culture, Philosophy, Religion, Social Commentary

The idea that there exists today a Christendom such as existed in the pre-modern era is as fanciful as the suggestion that the followers of Mohammed have established a truly global Caliphate. Nonetheless, to cast the recent rioters against portayals of Mohammed perceived as insulting and their political leaders as only mere descendants of clannish […]

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