Check out these recent articles from around the web:
The Theology of Social Democracy by Anthony Annett: “The two original pillars of social democracy were the welfare state and labor power. We need to restore both of those. We need a robust welfare state—funded by taxes on income, wealth, and inheritance—to protect people from economic dislocation and guarantee their basic economic rights. And we need to boost the power of organized labor, especially in the United States. These two pillars of social democracy will need to be supplemented by two newer ones: workplace democracy and decarbonization.”
Driving at ridiculous speeds should be physically impossible by David Zipper: “Speeding plays a role in over 12,000 US car fatalities per year, around a third of the national total. But an emergent technology could dramatically reduce that death toll, if not eliminate it entirely.”
Alcohol-Related Deaths Surge to Nearly 500 a Day, C.D.C. Says Jan Hoffman by Christina Jewett and Jan Hoffman: “The study found that deaths linked to alcohol in the United States increased in five years by 40,000. The toll is stark: About 178,000 people died in 2021 from excessive drinking, compared with 138,000 in 2016. During that period, the deaths rose by 27 percent among men and 35 percent among women.”
Recriminalizing drugs, Oregon offers a cautionary tale by the Washington Post: “Oregon’s experience shows that compassion is important for addicts, but so are consequences. Responding to the social ills of drug abuse requires a mix of carrots and sticks. Just as many people with drinking problems won’t put down the bottle until they get prosecuted for driving under the influence, drug courts connect many users with help they need but might not otherwise seek.”
What Would Society Look Like if Extreme Wealth Were Impossible? by Christine Emba: “Any individual’s wealth is dependent on the resources, effort, and cooperation of the society that surrounds them. Yet today, even though multibillionaires make their fortunes using the resources of a broader society—profiting off customers, employees, and public infrastructure; protected by government regulation and international accords—they are able to make unilateral decisions that shape society according to their desires, without that same society having much input at all.”
The Myth of Codependency by Elissa Strauss: “Mutual reliance is an accurate definition of a healthy relationship. The more we see depending on others and being depended on by others as an affliction, the less prepared we are for not just parenting and caregiving, but also any long-term friendship or romantic partnership.”
The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust by Derek Thompson: “Making friends as an adult can be hard; it’s especially hard without a scheduled weekly reunion of congregants. Finding meaning in the world is hard too; it’s especially difficult if the oldest systems of meaning-making hold less and less appeal. It took decades for Americans to lose religion. It might take decades to understand the entirety of what we lost.”
The War at Stanford by Theo Baker: “The real story at Stanford is not about the malicious actors who endorse sexual assault and murder as forms of resistance, but about those who passively enable them because they believe their side can do no wrong.”
A quarter of smokers quit within a year or two of menthol bans, researchers find by Jen Christensen: “The pooled results show that about a quarter of menthol smokers quit within a year or two when the substance is banned from cigarettes.”
Our wonderful pope is horribly wrong about Ukraine by MSW: “Francis is not the first person to naively think negotiations can always work. (And naivete is not the worst attribute in a religious leader!) British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain really thought he had achieved “peace in our time” when he returned from Munich having sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis in exchange for a paper promise by Hitler to forswear further territorial claims. Chamberlain is often dismissed as a naïve lightweight, but he was a man of substance. Like most people, he had been horrified by the carnage of World War I and so he wanted to believe a little too desperately that his good-faith negotiations would preserve the peace. The problem was that his good faith was not matched. Zelenskyy understands what Chamberlain did not and the pope does not.”
Also from MSW:
Easter prioritizes grace, life and universality
Vatican document on human dignity establishes theological guardrails
Millennial 