An important ethical function of identity politics, in this context, is to highlight that obstacles to the self-development of individuals, and to the formation and exercise of their agency, emerge in complex cultural and psychic forms, as well as th...
The assumption that being gay or black necessarily harms the self-worth of all who fit this category has a patronizing dimension, because it neglects consideration of the agency that persons exercise in respect of imposed identity.
It is much easier to condemn Islam and 'oppressive Muslim men' than to unpack the intricate relationships between global politics related to empire building and capitalist expansion as well as regional and national struggles revolving around politica...
Cantwell is so extreme that she doesn't see anything wrong with 11-year-old girls getting Plan B without a prescription. She is more liberal than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and more liberal than President Obama. That is pre...
Perhaps one of the most important things you can do for human beings is wean them off an animal-based diet. It hardens the arteries and runs up our health-care costs. The last thing a poor person can afford is a heart attack or cancer or a stroke. An...
The ultimate good in a liberal state is liberty.
We say we long for intimacy with God and others, and yet we structure our lives so that this becomes impossible. One might think we are avoiding intimacy, that maybe we really like our finely managed lives just the way they are.
Facing a deteriorating economy and a weakening hold over the populace, the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein opted to revitalize tribal leaders and conservative practices as a means of stabilizing state power; those conservative practices were not an ...
If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous...
My family had liberal positions.
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
I still think of Heaven as a liberal-arts school.
My dad's cool. He is socially liberal.
I sometimes wonder if God calls us into the church because it represents not the people of God at their best but us at our worst. I wonder if he calls us to become embedded in this wretched institution precisely because it is wretched. And calls us t...
The actual history of interracial rape - according to FBI statistics - is that, since the 70's, approximately 15,000 to 36,000 white women have been raped by black men every year, while, on average, zero black women are raped by black men." (The Depa...
Retreating from the world will not liberate you. Happiness is not found in a secluded forest hut or an isolated cave. Enlightenment comes when you connect to the world. Only when you truly connect with everyone and everything else do you become enlig...
. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in...
Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the...
When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become ...
Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who 'forgives' you--out of love--takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice. The price you must pay for your own liberation throug...
As we discard a limited mind and a life of limitation to step into the grandness of vastness, we realize infinity itself to be the Guru and all that we do as grace. As we traverse through consciousness that is the Guru, we become the Guru and each th...
