There Is A Tendency To Think That

I Grew Up In A Jewish Family, And We Have Raised Our Children In A Jewish Tradition. Religion Gives A Framework For Moral Enquiry In Young Minds And Points Us To Questions Beyond The Material.

There Are Really Exercises In A Kind Of Consumerist Ethic That I Think Don't Have The Same Moral Weight As Medicine Or Health.

I Do Not Argue That Nature Is Sacrosanct In The Sense That We Must Never Tamper With Nature. That Would Disempower, Really, All Of Medicine. That Would Mean That We Can't Combat Dread Diseases - Malaria, Polio, All Of Which Are Given By Nature, If One Thinks About It.

There's No Necessary Connection Between Maximizing Social Utility Or Economic Wealth And Creating A Flourishing Democracy. The First Does Not Guarantee The Second. The Only Way To Create A Flourishing Democracy Is To Find Ways To Reason Together About The Big Questions, Including Hard Questions About Justice And The Common Good, To Reason Together About These Questions So That We As Citizens Can Decide How To Shape The Forces That Govern Our Lives.

Very Often When We Aim At The Best, Or What We May Think Is The Best For Our Children, We Aim Really At Lesser Things, Such As Getting Into A Certain College.