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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
War
First published Tue May 3, 2016
Some reject the very idea of the “morality of war”.[1] Of those, some deny that morality applies at all once the guns strike up; for others, no plausible moral theory could license the exceptional horrors of war. The first group are sometimes called realists. The second group are pacifists. The task of just war theory is to seek a middle path between them: to justify at least some wars, but also to limit them (Ramsey 1961). Although realism undoubtedly has its adherents, few philosophers find it compelling.[2] The real challenge to just war theory comes from pacifism. And we should remember, from the outset, that this challenge is real. The justified war might well be a chimera.
However, this entry explores the middle path between realism and pacifism. It begins by outlining the central substantive divide in contemporary just war theory, before introducing the methodological schisms underpinning that debate. It then discusses the moral evaluation of wars as a whole, and of individual acts within war (traditionally, though somewhat misleadingly, called jus ad bellum and jus in bello respectively).
• 1. Traditionalists and Revisionists
• 2. How Should We Think about the Morality of War?
o 2.1 Historical vs Contemporary Just War Theory
o 2.2 Institutions and Actions
o 2.3 Overarching Disputes in Contemporary Analytical Just War Theory
o 2.4 Dividing up the Subject Matter
o 2.5 The Decisive Role of Necessity and Proportionality
• 3. Jus ad Bellum
o 3.1 Just Cause
o 3.2 Just Peace
o 3.3 Legitimate Authority
o 3.4 Proportionality
o 3.5 Last Resort (Necessity)
• 4. Jus in Bello
o 4.1 Walzer and his Critics
o 4.2 Killing Combatants
o 4.3 Sparing Civilians
o 4.4 Proportionality
o 4.5 Necessity
• 5. The Future of Just War Theory
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries
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1. Traditionalists and Revisionists
Contemporary just war theory is dominated by two camps: traditionalist and revisionist.[3] The traditionalists might as readily be called legalists. Their views on the morality of war are substantially led by international law, especially the law of armed conflict. They aim to provide those laws with morally defensible foundations. States (and only states) are permitted to go to war only for national defence, defence of other states, or to intervene to avert “crimes that shock the moral conscience of mankind” (Walzer 2006: 107). Civilians may not be targeted in war, but all combatants, whatever they are fighting for, are morally permitted to target one another, even when doing so foreseeably harms some civilians (so long as it does not do so excessively).[4]
Revisionists question the moral standing of states and the permissibility of national defence, argue for expanded permissions for humanitarian intervention, problematise civilian immunity, and contend that combatants fighting for wrongful aims cannot do anything right, besides lay down their weapons.
Most revisionists are moral revisionists only: they deny that the contemporary law of armed conflict is intrinsically morally justified, but believe, mostly for pragmatic reasons, that it need not be substantially changed. Some, however, are both morally and legally revisionist. And even moral revisionists’ disagreement with the traditionalists is hardly ersatz: most believe that, faced with a clash between what is morally and what is legally permitted or prohibited, individuals should follow their conscience rather than the law.[5]
The traditionalist view received its most prominent exposition the same year as it was decisively codified in international law, in the first additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, first published in 1977, has been extraordinarily influential among philosophers, political scientists, international lawyers, and military practitioners. Among its key contributions were its defence of central traditionalist positions on national defence, humanitarian intervention, discrimination, and combatant equality.
Early revisionists challenged Walzer’s views on national defence (Luban 1980a) and humanitarian intervention (Luban 1980b). Revisionist criticism of combatant equality and discrimination followed (Holmes 1989; McMahan 1994; Norman 1995). Since then there has been an explosion of revisionist rebuttals of Walzer (for example Rodin 2002; McMahan 2004b; McPherson 2004; Arneson 2006; Fabre 2009; McMahan 2009; Fabre 2012).
Concurrently, many philosophers welcomed Walzer’s conclusions, but rejected his arguments. They have accordingly sought firmer foundations for broadly traditionalist positions on national defence (Benbaji 2014; Moore 2014), humanitarian intervention (Coady 2002), discrimination (Rodin 2008b; Dill and Shue 2012; Lazar 2015c), and especially combatant equality (Zohar 1993; Kutz 2005; Benbaji 2008; Shue 2008; Steinhoff 2008; Emerton and Handfield 2009; Benbaji 2011).
We will delve deeper into these debates in what follows. First, though, some methodological groundwork. Traditionalists and revisionists alike often rely on methodological or second-order premises, to the extent that one might think that the first-order questions are really just proxy battles through which they work out their deeper disagreements (Lazar and Valentini forthcoming).
2. How Should We Think about the Morality of War?
2.1 Historical vs Contemporary Just War Theory
For the sake of concision this entry discusses only contemporary analytical philosophers working on war. Readers are directed to the excellent work of philosophers and intellectual historians such as Greg Reichberg, Pablo Kalmanovitz, Daniel Schwartz, and Rory Cox to gain further insights about historical just war theory (see, in particular, Cox 2016; Kalmanovitz 2016; Reichberg 2016; Schwartz 2016).
2.2 Institutions and Actions
Within contemporary analytical philosophy, there are two different ways in which moral and political philosophers think about war (Lazar and Valentini forthcoming). On the first, institutionalist, approach, philosophers’ primary goal is to establish what the institutions regulating war should be. In particular, we should prescribe morally justified laws of war. We then tell individuals and groups that they ought to follow those laws. On the second approach, we should focus first on the moral reasons that apply directly to individual and group actions, without the mediating factor of institutions. We tell individuals and groups to act as their moral reasons dictate. Since this approach focuses not on the institutions that govern our interactions, but on those interactions themselves, we will call it the “interactional” approach.[6]
In general, the institutionalist approach is favoured by indirect consequentialists and contractualists. Indirect consequentialists believe these institutions are justified just in case they will in fact have better long-run results than any feasible alternative institutions (see Mavrodes 1975; Dill and Shue 2012; Shue 2013; Waldron 2016). Contractualists believe these institutions ground or reflect either an actual or a hypothetical contract among states and/or their citizens, which specifies the terms of their interaction in war (see Benbaji 2008, 2011, 2014; Statman 2014).
Non-contractualist deontologists and direct- or act-consequentialists tend to prefer the interactional approach. Their central question is: what moral reasons bear directly on the permissibility of killing in war? This focus on killing might seem myopic—war involves much more violence and destruction than the killing alone. However, typically this is just a heuristic device; since we typically think of killing as the most presumptively wrongful kind of harm, whatever arguments one identifies that justify killing are likely also to justify lesser wrongs. And if the killing that war involves cannot be justified, then we should endorse pacifism.
Any normative theory of war should pay attention both to what the laws of war should be, and to what we morally ought to do. These are two distinct but equally important questions. And they entail the importance of a third: what ought we to do all things considered, for example when law and morality conflict? Too much recent just war theory has focused on arguing that philosophical attention should be reserved to one of the first two of these questions (Buchanan 2006; Shue 2008, 2010; Rodin 2011b). Not enough has concentrated on the third (though see McMahan 2008; Lazar 2012a).
Although this entry touches on the first question, it focuses on the second. Addressing the first requires detailed empirical research and pragmatic political speculation, both of which are beyond my remit here. Addressing the third takes us too deep into the minutiae of contemporary just war theory for an encyclopaedia entry.
What’s more, even institutionalists need some answer to the second question—and so some account of the interactional morality of war. Rule-consequentialists need an account of the good (bad) that they are hoping that the ideal laws of war will maximise (minimise) in the long run. This means, for example, deciding whether to aim to minimise all harm, or only to minimise wrongful harm. The latter course is much more plausible—we wouldn’t want laws of war that, for example, licensed genocide just in case doing so leads to fewer deaths overall. But to follow this course, we need to know which harms are (extra-institutionally) wrongful. Similarly, contractualists typically acknowledge various constraints on the kinds of rules that could form the basis of a legitimate contract, which, again, we cannot work out without thinking about the extra-institutional morality of war (Benbaji 2011).
2.3 Overarching Disputes in Contemporary Analytical Just War Theory
Even within interactional just war theory, several second-order disagreements underscore first-order disputes. First: when thinking about the ethics of war, what kinds of cases should we use to test our intuitions and our principles? We can start by thinking about actual wars and realistic wartime scenarios, paying attention to international affairs and military history. Or, more clinically, we can construct hypothetical cases to isolate variables and test their impact on our intuitions.
Some early revisionists relied heavily on highly artificial cases (e.g., McMahan 1994; Rodin 2002). They were criticized for this by traditionalists, who generally use more empirically-informed examples (Walzer 2006). But one’s standpoint on the substantive questions at issue between traditionalists and revisionists need not be predetermined by one’s methodology. Revisionists can pay close attention to actual conflicts (e.g., Fabre 2012). Traditionalists can use artificial hypotheticals (e.g., Emerton and Handfield 2009; Lazar 2013).
Abstraction forestalls unhelpful disputes over historical details. It also reduces bias—we are inclined to view actual conflicts through the lens of our own political allegiances. But it also has costs. We should be proportionately less confident of our intuitions the more removed the test case is from our lived experience. Philosophers’ scenarios involving mind-control, armed pedestrians, trolleys, meteorites, and incredibly complicated causal sequences are pure exercises in imagination. How can we trust our judgements about such cases more than we trust our views on actual, realistic scenarios? What’s more, abandoning the harrowing experience of war for sanitized hypothetical cases might be not merely epistemically unsound, but also disrespectful of the victims of war. Lastly, cleaned-up examples often omit morally relevant details—for instance, assuming that everyone has all the information relevant to their choice, rather than acknowledging the “fog of war”, and making no allowances for fear or trauma.
Artificial hypotheticals have their place, but any conclusions they support must be tested against the messy reality of war. What’s more, our intuitive judgements should be the starting-point for investigation, rather than its end.
The second divide is related to the first. Reductivists think that killing in war must be justified by the same properties that justify killing outside of war. Non-reductivists, sometimes called exceptionalists, think that some properties justify killing in war that do not justify killing outside of war.[7] Most exceptionalists think that specific features of killing in war make it morally different from killing in ordinary life—for example, the scale of the conflict, widespread and egregious non-compliance with fundamental moral norms, the political interests at stake, the acute uncertainty, the existence of the law of armed conflict, or the fact that the parties to the conflict are organized groups. A paradigm reductivist, by contrast, might argue that justified wars are mere aggregates of justified acts of individual self- and other-defence (see Rodin 2002; McMahan 2004a).
Reductivists are much more likely to use far-fetched hypothetical cases, since they think there is nothing special about warfare. The opposite is true for exceptionalists. Walzer’s first critics relied on reductivist premises to undermine the principles of national defence (Luban 1980a; Rodin 2002), discrimination (Holmes 1989; McMahan 1994), and combatant equality (Holmes 1989; McMahan 1994). Many traditionalists replied by rejecting reductivism, arguing that there is something special about war that justifies a divergence from the kinds of judgements that are appropriate to other kinds of conflict (Zohar 1993; Kutz 2005; Benbaji 2008; Dill and Shue 2012). Again, some philosophers buck these overarching trends (for reductivist traditionalist arguments, see e.g., Emerton and Handfield 2009; Lazar 2015c; Haque 2017; for non-reductivist revisionist arguments, see e.g., Ryan 2016).
The debate between reductivism and exceptionalism is overblown—the concept of “war” is vague, and while typical wars involve properties that are not instantiated in typical conflicts outside of war, we can always come up with far-fetched hypotheticals that don’t involve those properties, which we wouldn’t call “wars”. But this masks a deeper methodological disagreement: when thinking about the morality of war, should we start by thinking about war, or by thinking about the permissible use of force outside of war? Should we model justified killing in war on justified killing outside of war? Or, in focusing on the justification of killing in war, might we then discover that there are some non-canonical cases of permissible killing outside of war? My own view is that thinking about justified killing outside of war has its place, but must be complemented by thinking about war directly.
Next, we can distinguish between individualists and collectivists; and we can subdivide them further into evaluative and descriptive categories. Evaluative individualists think that a collective’s moral significance is wholly reducible to its contribution to the well-being of the individuals who compose it. Evaluative collectivists think that collectives can matter independently of how they contribute to individual well-being. Descriptive individualists think that any act that might appear to be collective is reducible to component acts by individuals. Descriptive collectivists deny this, thinking that some acts are irreducibly collective.[8]
Again, the dialectic of contemporary just war theory involves revisionists first arguing that we cannot vindicate traditionalist positions on descriptively and evaluatively individualist grounds, with some traditionalists then responding by rejecting descriptive (Kutz 2005; Walzer 2006; Lazar 2012b) and evaluative individualism (Zohar 1993). And again there are outliers—individualist traditionalists (e.g., Emerton and Handfield 2009) and collectivist revisionists (e.g., Bazargan 2013).
Unlike the reductivist/exceptionalist divide, the individualist/collectivist split cannot be resolved by thinking about the morality of war on its own. War is a useful test case for theories of collective action and the value of collectives, but no more than that. Intuitions about war are no substitute for a theory of collective action. Perhaps some collectives have value beyond their contribution to the well-being of their members. For example, they might instantiate justice, or solidarity, which can be impersonally valuable (Temkin 1993). It is doubtful, however, that groups have interests independent from the well-being of their members. On the descriptive side, even if we can reduce collective actions to the actions of individual members, this probably involves such complicated contortions that we should seriously question whether it is worth doing (Lazar 2012b).
2.4 Dividing up the Subject Matter
Traditionally, just war theorists divide their enquiry into reflection on the resort to war—jus ad bellum—and conduct in war—jus in bello. More recently, they have added an account of permissible action post-war, or jus post bellum. Others suggest an independent focus on war exit, which they have variously called jus ex bello and jus terminatio (Moellendorf 2008; Rodin 2008a). These Latin labels, though unfortunately obscurantist, serve as a useful shorthand. When we refer to ad bellum justice, we mean to evaluate the permissibility of the war as a whole. This is particularly salient when deciding to launch the war. But it is also crucial for the decision to continue fighting. Jus ex bello, then, fits within jus ad bellum. The jus in bello denotes the permissibility of particular actions that compose the war, short of the war as a whole.
2.5 The Decisive Role of Necessity and Proportionality
Traditional just war theory construes jus ad bellum and jus in bello as sets of principles, satisfying which is necessary and sufficient for a war’s being permissible. Jus ad bellum typically comprises the following six principles:
1. Just Cause: the war is an attempt to avert the right kind of injury.
2. Legitimate Authority: the war is fought by an entity that has the authority to fight such wars.
3. Right Intention: that entity intends to achieve the just cause, rather than using it as an excuse to achieve some wrongful end.
4. Reasonable Prospects of Success: the war is sufficiently likely to achieve its aims.
5. Proportionality: the morally weighted goods achieved by the war outweigh the morally weighted bads that it will cause.
6. Last Resort (Necessity): there is no other less harmful way to achieve the just cause.
Typically the jus in bello list comprises:
1. Discrimination: belligerents must always distinguish between military objectives and civilians, and intentionally attack only military objectives.
2. Proportionality: foreseen but unintended harms must be proportionate to the military advantage achieved.
3. Necessity: the least harmful means feasible must be used.
These all matter to the ethics of war, and will be addressed below. However, it is unhelpful to view them as a checklist of necessary and sufficient conditions. When they are properly understood, only proportionality and necessity (in the guise of last resort in the jus ad bellum) are necessary conditions for a war, or an act in a war, to be permissible, since no matter how badly going to war fails the other ad bellum criteria (for example) it might still be permissible because it is the least awful of one’s alternatives, and so satisfies the necessity and proportionality constraints.
To get an intuitive grasp on necessity and proportionality, note that if someone threatens my life, then killing her would be proportionate; but if I could stop her by knocking her out, then killing her would be unnecessary, and so impermissible. The necessity and proportionality constraints have the same root: with few exceptions (perhaps when it is deserved), harm is intrinsically bad. Harms (and indeed all bads) that we cause must therefore be justified by some positive reason that counts in their favour—such as good achieved or evil averted (Lazar 2012a). Both the necessity and proportionality constraints involve comparing the bads caused by an action with the goods that it achieves. They differ only in the kinds of options they compare.
The use of force is proportionate when the harm done is counterbalanced by the good achieved in averting a threat. To determine this, we typically compare the candidate course of action with what would happen if we allowed the threat to eventuate.
Of course, in most cases we will have more than one means of averting or mitigating the threat. And a harmful option can be permissible only if all the harm that it involves is justified by a corresponding good achieved. If some alternative would as successfully avert the threat, but cause less harm, then the more harmful option is impermissible, because it involves unnecessary harm.
Where an option O aims to avert a threat T, we determine O’s necessity by comparing it with all the other options that will either mitigate or avert T. We determine its proportionality by comparing it with the harm suffered if T should come about. The only difference between the proportionality and necessity constraints is that the former involves comparing one’s action with a very specific counterfactual scenario—in which we don’t act to avert the threat—while the latter involves comparing it with all your available options that have some prospect of averting or mitigating the threat. In my view, we should simply expand this so that the necessity constraint compares all your available options bar none. Then proportionality would essentially involve comparing each option with the alternative of doing nothing, while necessity would involve comparing all options (including doing nothing) in terms of their respective balances of goods and bads. On this approach, necessity would subsume proportionality. But this is a technical point with little substantive payoff.
More substantively, necessity and proportionality judgements concern consequences, and yet they are typically made ex ante, before we know what the results of our actions will be. They must therefore be modified to take this uncertainty into account. The most obvious solution is simply to refer to expected threats and expected harms, where the expected harm of an option O is the probability-weighted average of the harms that might result if I take O, and the expected threat is the probability-weighted average of the consequences of doing nothing to prevent the threat—allowing for the possibility that the threat might not eventuate at all (Lazar 2012b). We would also have to factor in the options’ probability of averting the threat. This simple move obscures a number of important and undertheorised issues that we cannot discuss in detail here. For now, we must simply note that proportionality and necessity must be appropriately indexed to the agent’s uncertainty.
Necessity and proportionality judgements involve weighing harms inflicted and threats averted, indeed all relevant goods and bads. The simplest way to proceed would be to aggregate the harms to individual people on each side, and call the act proportionate just in case it averts more harm than it causes, and necessary just in case no alternative involves less harm. But few deontologists, and indeed few non-philosophers, think in this naively aggregative way. Instead we should weight harms (etc.) according to factors such as whether the agent is directly responsible for them, and whether they are intended or merely foreseen.[9] Many also think that we can, perhaps even must, give greater importance in our deliberations to our loved ones (for example) than to those tied to us only by the common bonds of humanity (Hurka 2007; Lazar 2013; for criticism, see Lefkowitz 2009). Similarly, we might justifiably prioritise defending our own state’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, even when doing so would not be impartially best.[10] Only when all these and other factors (many of which are discussed below) are taken into consideration can we form defensible conclusions about which options are necessary and proportionate.
The other elements of the ethics of war contribute to the evaluation of proportionality and necessity, in one (or more) of three ways: identifying positive reasons in favour of fighting; delineating the negative reasons against fighting; or as staging-posts on the way to judgements of necessity and proportionality.
Given the gravity of the decision to go to war, only very serious threats can give us just cause to fight. So if just cause is satisfied, then you have weighty positive reasons to fight. Lacking just cause does not in itself aggravate the badness of fighting, but does make it less likely that the people killed in pursuing one’s war aims will be liable to be killed (more on this below, and see McMahan 2005a), which makes killing very hard to justify. Even if having a just cause is not strictly speaking a necessary condition for warfare to be permissible, the absence of a just cause makes it very difficult for a war to satisfy proportionality.
If legitimate authority is satisfied then additional positive reasons count in favour of fighting (see below). If it is not satisfied, then this adds an additional reason against fighting, which must be overcome for fighting to be proportionate.
The “reasonable prospects of success” criterion is a surmountable hurdle on the way to proportionality. Typically, if a war lacks reasonable prospects of success, then it will be disproportionate, since wars always involve causing significant harms, and if those harms are likely to be pointless then they are unlikely to be justified. But of course sometimes one’s likelihood of victory is very low, and yet fighting is still the best available option, and so necessary and proportionate. Having reasonable prospects of success matters only for the same reasons that necessity and proportionality matter. If necessity and proportionality are satisfied, then the reasonable prospects of success standard is irrelevant.
Right intention may also be irrelevant, but insofar as it matters its absence would be a reason against fighting; having the right intention does not give a positive reason to fight.
Lastly, discrimination is crucial to establishing proportionality and necessity, because it tells us how to weigh the lives taken in war.
3. Jus ad Bellum
3.1 Just Cause
Wars destroy lives and environments. In the eight years following the Iraq invasion in 2003, half a million deaths were either directly or indirectly caused by the war (Hagopian et al. 2013). Direct casualties from the Second World War numbered over 60 million, about 3 per cent of the world’s population. War’s environmental costs are less commonly researched, but are obviously also extraordinary (Austin and Bruch 2000). Armed forces use fuels in Olympian quantities: in the years from 2000–2013, the US Department of Defense accounted for around 80% of US federal government energy usage, between 0.75 and 1 quadrillion BTUs per year—a little less than all the energy use that year in Denmark and Bulgaria, a little more than Slovakia and Serbia (Energy Information Administration 2015a,b). They also directly and indirectly destroy habitats and natural resources—consider, for example, the Gulf war oil spill (El-Baz and Makharita 1994). For both our planet and its inhabitants, wars are truly among the very worst things we can do.
War can be necessary and proportionate only if it serves an end worth all this death and destruction. Hence the importance of having a just cause. And hence too the widespread belief that just causes are few and far between. Indeed, traditional just war theory recognizes only two kinds of justification for war: national defence (of one’s own state or of an ally) and humanitarian intervention. What’s more, humanitarian intervention is permissible only to avert the very gravest of tragedies—“crimes that shock the moral conscience of mankind” (Walzer 2006: 107).
Walzer argued that states’ claims to sovereignty and territorial integrity are grounded in the human rights of their citizens, in three ways. First, states ensure individual security. Rights to life and liberty have value “only if they also have dimension” (Walzer 2006: 58), which they derive from states’ borders—“within that world, men and women… are safe from attack; once the lines are crossed, safety is gone” (Walzer 2006: 57). Second, states protect a common life, made by their citizens over centuries of interaction. If the common life of a political community is valued by its citizens, then it is worth fighting for. Third, they have also formed a political association, an organic social contract, whereby individuals have, over time and in informal ways, conceded aspects of their liberty to the community, to secure greater freedom for all.
These arguments for national defence are double-edged. They helped explain why wars of national defence are permissible, but also make justifying humanitarian intervention harder. One can in principle successfully conclude a war in defence of oneself or one's allies without any lasting damage to the political sovereignty or territorial integrity of any of the contending parties. In Walzer’s view, humanitarian interventions, in which one typically defends people against their own state, necessarily undermine political sovereignty and territorial integrity. So they must meet a higher burden of justification.
Walzer’s traditionalist stances on national defence and humanitarian intervention met heavy criticism. Early sceptics (Doppelt 1978; Beitz 1980; Luban 1980a) challenged Walzer’s appeal to the value of collective freedom, noting that in diverse political communities freedom for the majority can mean oppression for the minority (see also Caney 2006). In modern states, can we even speak of a single common life? Even if we can, do wars really threaten it, besides in extreme cases? And even if our common life and culture were threatened, would their defence really justify killing innocent people?
Critics also excoriated Walzer’s appeal to individual rights (see especially Wasserstrom 1978; Luban 1980b). They questioned the normative purchase of his metaphor of the organic social contract (if hypothetical contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on, then what are metaphorical contracts worth?). They challenged his claim that states guarantee individual security: most obviously, when humanitarian intervention seems warranted, the state is typically the greatest threat to its members.
David Rodin (2002) advanced the quintessentially reductivist critique of Walzer, showing that his attempt to ground state defence in individual defensive rights could not succeed. He popularized the “bloodless invasion objection” to this argument for national defensive rights. Suppose an unjustly aggressing army would secure its objectives without loss of life if only the victim state offers no resistance (the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, arguably meet this description, as might some of Russia’s territorial expansions). If the right of national defence is grounded in states’ members’ rights to security, then in these cases there would be no right of national defence, because their lives are at risk only if the victim state fights back. And yet we typically do think it permissible to fight against annexation and regime change.
By undermining the value of sovereignty, revisionists lowered the bar against intervening militarily in other states. Often these arguments were directly linked: some think that if states cannot protect the security of their members, then they lack any rights to sovereignty that a military intervention could undermine (Shue 1997).[11] Caney (2005) argues that military intervention could be permissible were it to serve individual human rights better than non-intervention. Others countenance so-called “redistributive wars”, fought on behalf of the global poor to force rich states to address the widespread violations of fundamental human rights caused by their economic policies (Luban 1980b; Fabre 2012; Lippert-Rasmussen 2013; Øverland 2013).
Other philosophers, equally unpersuaded by Walzer’s arguments, nonetheless reject a substantively revisionist take on just cause. If the individual self-defence-based view of jus ad bellum cannot justify lethal defence against “lesser aggression”, then we could follow Rodin (2014), and argue for radically revisionist conclusions about just cause; or we could instead reject the individual self-defence-based approach to justifying killing in war (Emerton and Handfield 2014; Lazar 2014).
Some think we can solve the “problem of lesser aggression” by invoking the importance of deterrence, as well as the impossibility of knowing for sure that aggression will be bloodless (Fabre 2014). Others think that we must take proper account of people’s interest in having a democratically elected, or at least home-grown, government, to justify national defence. On one popular account, although no individual could permissibly kill to protect her own “political interests”, when enough people are threatened, their aggregated interests justify going to war (Hurka 2007; Frowe 2014). Counterintuitively, this means that more populous states have, other things equal, more expansive rights of national defence. However, perhaps states have a group right to national defence, which requires only that a sufficient number of individuals have the relevant political interests—any excess over the threshold is morally irrelevant. Many already think about national self-determination in this way: the population of the group seeking independence has to be sufficiently large before we take their claim seriously, but differences above that threshold matter much less (Margalit and Raz 1990).
The revisionist take on humanitarian intervention might also have some troubling results. If sovereignty and territorial integrity matter little, then shouldn’t we use military force more often? As Kutz (2014) has argued, revisionist views on national defence might license the kind of military adventurism that went so badly wrong in Iraq, where states have so little regard for sovereignty that they go to war to improve the domestic political institutions of their adversaries.
We can resolve this worry in one of two ways. First, recall just how infrequently military intervention succeeds. Since it so often not only fails, but actually makes things worse, we should use it only when the ongoing crimes are so severe that we would take any risk to try to stop them.
Second, perhaps the political interests underpinning the state’s right to national defence are not simply interests in being part of an ideal liberal democracy, but in being governed by, very broadly, members of one’s own nation, or perhaps even an interest in collective self-determination. This may take us back to Walzer’s “romance of the nation-state”, but people clearly do care about something like this. Unless we want to restrict rights of national defence to liberal democracies alone (bearing in mind how few of them there are in the world), we have to recognize that our political interests are not all exclusively liberal-democratic.
What of redistributive wars? Too often arguments on this topic artfully distinguish between just cause and other conditions of jus ad bellum (Fabre 2012). Even when used by powerful states against weak adversaries, military force is rarely a moral triumph. It tends to cause more problems than it solves. Redistributive wars, as fought on behalf of the “global poor” against the “global rich”, would obviously fail to achieve their objectives, indeed they would radically exacerbate the suffering of those they aim to help. So they would be disproportionate, and cannot satisfy the necessity constraint. The theoretical point that, in principle, not only national defence and humanitarian intervention could give just causes for war is sound. But this example is in practice irrelevant (for a robust critique of redistributive wars, see Benbaji 2014).
And yet, given the likely path of climate change, the future might see resource wars grow in salience. As powerful states find themselves lacking crucial resources, held by other states, we might find that military attack is the best available means to secure these resources, and save lives. Perhaps in some such circumstances resource wars could be a realistic option.
3.2 Just Peace
The goods and bads relevant to ad bellum proportionality and necessity extend far beyond the armistice. This is obvious, but has recently received much-needed emphasis, both among philosophers and in the broader public debate sparked by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (Bass 2004; Coady 2008; May 2012). Achieving your just cause is not enough. The aftermath of the war must also be sufficiently tolerable if the war is to be proportionate, all things considered. It is an open question how far into the future we have to look to assess the morally relevant consequences of conflict.
3.3 Legitimate Authority
Historically, just war theory has been dominated by statists. Most branches of the tradition have had some version of a “legitimate”, “proper” or “right” authority constraint, construed as a necessary condition for a war to be ad bellum just.[12] In practice, this means that sovereigns and states have rights that non-state actors lack. International law gives only states rights of national defence and bestows “combatant rights” primarily on the soldiers of states. Although Walzer said little about legitimate authority, his arguments all assume that states have a special moral standing that non-state actors lack.
The traditionalist, then, says it matters that the body fighting the war have the appropriate authority to do so. Some think that authority is grounded in the overall legitimacy of the state. Others think that overall legitimacy is irrelevant—what matters is whether the body fighting the war is authorized to do so by the polity that it represents (Lazar forthcoming-b). Either way, states are much more likely to satisfy the legitimate authority condition than non-state actors.
Revisionists push back: relying on reductivist premises, they argue that killing in war is justified by the protection of individual rights, and our licence to defend our rights need not be mediated through state institutions. Either we should disregard the legitimate authority condition or we should see it as something that non-state actors can, in fact, fulfil (Fabre 2008; Finlay 2010; Schwenkenbecher 2013).
Overall, state legitimacy definitely seems relevant for some questions in war (Estlund 2007; Renzo 2013). But authorization is more fundamental. Ideally, the body fighting the war should be authorized to do so by the institutions of a constitutional democracy. Looser forms of authorization are clearly possible; even a state that is not overall legitimate might nonetheless be authorized by its polity to fight wars of national defence.
Authorization of this kind matters to jus ad bellum in two ways. First, fighting a war without authorization constitutes an additional wrong, which has to be weighed against the goods that fighting will bring about, and must pass the proportionality and necessity tests. When a government involves its polity in a war, it uses the resources of the community at large, as well as its name, and exposes it to both moral and prudential risks (Lazar forthcoming-b). Doing this unauthorized is obviously deeply morally problematic. Any form of undemocratic decision-making by governments is objectionable; taking decisions of this magnitude without the population’s granting you the right to do so is especially wrong.
Second, authorization can allow the government to act on positive reasons for fighting that would otherwise be unavailable. Consider the claim that wars of national defence are in part justified by the political interests of the citizens of the defending state—interests, for example, in democratic participation or in collective self-determination. A government may defend these aggregated political interests only if it is authorized to do so. Otherwise fighting would contravene the very interests in self-determination that it is supposed to protect. But if it is authorized, then that additional set of reasons supports fighting.
As a result, democratic states enjoy somewhat more expansive war rights than non-democratic states and non-state movements. The latter two groups cannot often claim the same degree of authorization as democratic states. Although this might not vindicate the current bias in international law towards states, it does suggest that it corresponds to something more than the naked self-interest of the framers of international law—which were, of course, states. This obviously has significant implications for civil wars (see Parry 2016).
3.4 Proportionality
The central task of the proportionality constraint, recall, is to identify reasons that tell in favour of fighting and those that tell against it. Much of the latter task is reserved for the discussion of jus in bello below, since it concerns weighing lives in war.
Among the goods that help make a war proportionate, we have already considered those in the just cause and others connected to just peace and legitimate authority. Additionally, many also think that proportionality can be swayed by reasonable partiality towards one’s own state and co-citizens. Think back to the political interests that help justify national defence. If we were wholly impartial, then we should choose the course that will best realise people’s political interests overall. So if fighting the defensive war would undermine the political interests of the adversary state’s citizens more than it would undermine our own, then we should refuse to fight. But this is not how we typically think about the permission to resort to war: we are typically entitled to be somewhat partial towards the political interests of our co-citizens.
Some propose further constraints on what goods can count towards the proportionality of a war. McMahan and McKim (1993) argued that benefits like economic progress cannot make an otherwise disproportionate war proportionate. This is probably true in practice, but perhaps not in principle—that would require a kind of lexical priority between lives taken and economic benefits, and lexical priorities are notoriously hard to defend. After all, economic progress saves lives.
Some goods lack weight in ad bellum proportionality, not because they are lexically inferior to other values at stake, but because they are conditional in particular ways. Soldiers have conditional obligations to fulfil their roles, grounded in their contracts, oaths, and their co-citizens’ legitimate expectations. That carrying out an operation fulfils my oath gives me a reason to perform that operation, which has to be weighed in the proportionality calculation (Lazar 2015b). But these reasons cannot contribute to ad bellum proportionality in the same way, because they are conditional on the war as a whole being fought. Political leaders cannot plausibly say: “were it not for all the oaths that would be fulfilled by fighting, this war would be disproportionate”. This is because fighting counts as fulfilling those oaths only if the political leader decides to take her armed forces to war.
Another reason to differentiate between proportionality ad bellum and in bello is that the relevant comparators change for the two kinds of assessment. In a loose sense, we determine proportionality by asking whether some option is better than doing nothing. The comparator for assessing the war as a whole, then, is not fighting at all, ending the war as a whole. That option is not available when considering particular actions within the war—one can only decide whether or not to perform this particular action.
3.5 Last Resort (Necessity)
Are pre-emptive wars, fought in anticipation of an imminent enemy attack, permissible? What of preventive wars, in which the assault occurs prior to the enemy having any realistic plan of attack (see, in general, Shue and Rodin 2007)? Neoconservatives have recently argued, superficially plausibly, that the criterion of last resort can be satisfied long before the enemy finally launches an attack (see President 2002). The right answer here is boringly familiar. In principle, of course this is possible. But, in practice, we almost always overestimate the likelihood of success from military means and overlook the unintended consequences of our actions. International law must therefore retain its restrictions, to deter the kind of overzealous implementation of the last-resort principle that we saw in the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Buchanan and Keohane 2004; Luban 2004).
Another frequently discussed question: what does the “last” in last resort really mean? The idea is simple, and is identical to in bello necessity. Going to war must be compared with the alternative available strategies for dealing with the enemy (which also includes the various ways in which we could submit). Going to war is literally a last resort when no other available means has any prospect of averting the threat. But our circumstances are not often this straitened. Other options always have some chance of success. So if you have a diplomatic alternative to war, which is less harmful than going to war, and is at least as likely to avert the threat, then going to war is not a last resort. If the diplomatic alternative is less harmful, as well as less likely to avert the threat, then the question is whether the reduction in expected harm is great enough for us to be required to accept the reduction in likelihood of averting the threat. If not, then war is your last resort.[13]
4. Jus in Bello
4.1 Walzer and his Critics
The traditionalist jus in bello, as reflected in international law, holds that conduct in war must satisfy three principles:
1. Discrimination: Targeting noncombatants is impermissible.[14]
2. Proportionality: Collaterally harming noncombatants (that is, harming them foreseeably, but unintendedly) is permissible only if the harms are proportionate to the goals the attack is intended to achieve.[15]
3. Necessity: Collaterally harming noncombatants is permissible only if, in the pursuit of one’s military objectives, the least harmful means feasible are chosen.[16]
These principles divide the possible victims of war into two classes: combatants and noncombatants. They place no constraints on killing combatants.[17] But—outside of “supreme emergencies”, rare circumstances in which intentionally killing noncombatants is necessary to avert an unconscionable threat—noncombatants may be killed only unintendedly and, even then, only if the harm they suffer is necessary and proportionate to the intended goals of the attack.[18] Obviously, then, much hangs on what makes one a combatant. This entry adopts a conservative definition. Combatants are (most) members of the organized armed forces of a group that is at war, as well as others who directly participate in hostilities or have a continuous combat function (for discussion, see Haque 2017). Noncombatants are not combatants. There are, of course, many hard cases, especially in asymmetric wars, but they are not considered here. “Soldier” is used interchangeably with “combatant” and “civilian” interchangeably with “noncombatant”.
Both traditionalist just war theory and international law explicitly license fighting in accordance with these constraints, regardless of one’s objectives. In other words, they endorse:
Combatant Equality: Soldiers who satisfy Discrimination, Proportionality, and Necessity fight permissibly, regardless of what they are fighting for. [19]
We discuss Proportionality and Necessity below; for now let us concentrate on Michael Walzer’s influential argument for Discrimination and Combatant Equality, which has proved very controversial.
Individual human beings enjoy fundamental rights to life and liberty, which prohibit others from harming them in certain ways. Since fighting wars obviously involves depriving others of life and liberty, according to Walzer, it can be permissible only if each of the victims has, “through some act of his own … surrendered or lost his rights” (Walzer 2006: 135). He then claims that, “simply by fighting”, all combatants “have lost their title to life and liberty” (Walzer 2006: 136). First, merely by posing a threat to me, a person alienates himself from me, and from our common humanity, and so himself becomes a legitimate target of lethal force (Walzer 2006: 142). Second, by participating in the armed forces, a combatant has “allowed himself to be made into a dangerous man” (Walzer 2006: 145), and thus surrendered his rights. By contrast, noncombatants are “men and women with rights, and… they cannot be used for some military purpose, even if it is a legitimate purpose” (Walzer 2006: 137). This introduces the concept of liability into the debate, which we need to define carefully. On most accounts, that a person is liable to be killed means that she is not wronged by being killed. Often this is understood, as it was in Walzer, in terms of rights: everyone starts out with a right to life, but that right can be forfeited or lost, such that one can be killed without that right being violated or infringed. Walzer and his critics all agreed that killing a person intentionally is permissible only if either she has lost the protection of her right to life, or if the good achieved thereby is very great indeed, enough that, though she is wronged, it is not all things considered wrong to kill her. Her right is permissibly infringed. Walzer and his critics believe that such cases are very rare in war, arising only when the alternative to intentionally violating people’s right to life is an imminent catastrophe on the order of Nazi victory in Europe (this is an example of a supreme emergency).
These simple building blocks give us both Discrimination and Combatant Equality—the former, because noncombatants, in virtue of retaining their rights, are not legitimate objects of attack; the latter, because all combatants lose their rights, regardless of what they are fighting for: hence, as long as they attack only enemy combatants, they fight legitimately, because they do not violate anyone’s rights.
These arguments have faced withering criticism. The simplest objection against Combatant Equality brings it into conflict with Proportionality (McMahan 1994; Rodin 2002; Hurka 2005). Unintended noncombatant deaths are permissible only if proportionate to the military objective sought. This means the objective is worth that much innocent suffering. But military objectives are merely means to an end. Their worth depends on how valuable the end is. How many innocent deaths would be proportionate to Al Shabab’s successfully gaining control of Mogadishu now or to Iraq’s capturing Kuwaiti territory and oil reserves in 1991? In each case the answer is obvious: none.
Proportionality is about weighing the evil inflicted against the evil averted (Lee 2012). But the military success of unjust combatants does not avert evil, it is itself evil. Evil intentionally inflicted can only add to, not counterbalance, unintended evils. Combatant Equality cannot be true.
Other arguments against Combatant Equality focus on Walzer’s account of how one loses the right to life. They typically start by accepting his premise that permissible killing in war does not violate the rights of the victims against being killed, at least for intentional killing.[20] This contrasts with the view that sometimes people’s rights to life can be overridden, so war can be permissible despite infringing people’s rights. Walzer’s critics then show that his account of how we lose our right to life is simply not plausible. Merely posing a threat to others—even a lethal threat—is not sufficient to warrant the loss of one’s fundamental rights, because sometimes one threatens others’ lives for very good reasons (McMahan 1994). The soldiers of the Kurdish Peshmerga, heroically fighting to rescue Yazidis from ISIL’s genocidal attacks, do not thereby lose their rights not to be killed by their adversaries. Posing threats to others in the pursuit of a just aim, where those others are actively trying to thwart that just aim, cannot void or vitiate one’s fundamental natural rights against being harmed by those very people. The consent-based argument is equally implausible as a general defence for Combatant Equality. Unjust combatants have something to gain from waiving their rights against lethal attack, if doing so causes just combatants to effect the same waiver. And on most views, many unjust combatants have nothing to lose, since by participating in an unjust war they have at least weakened if not lost those rights already. Just combatants, by contrast, have something to lose, and nothing to gain. So why would combatants fighting for a just cause consent to be harmed by their adversaries, in the pursuit of an unjust end?
Walzer’s case for Combatant Equality rests on showing that just combatants lose their rights to life. His critics have shown that his arguments to this end fail. So Combatant Equality is false. But they have shown more than this. Inspired by Walzer to look at the conditions under which we lose our rights to life, his critics have made theoretical advances that place other central tenets of jus in bello in jeopardy. They argued, contra Walzer, that posing a threat is not sufficient for liability to be killed (McMahan 1994, 2009). But they also showed that posing the threat oneself is not necessary for liability either. This is more controversial, but revisionists have long argued that liability is grounded, in war as elsewhere, in one’s responsibility for contributing to a wrongful threat. The US president, for example, is responsible for a drone strike she orders, even though she does not fire the weapon herself.
As many have noted, this argument undermines Discrimination (McMahan 1994; Arneson 2006; Fabre 2012; Frowe 2014). In many states, noncombatants play an important role in the resort to military force. In modern industrialized countries, as much as 25 per cent of the population works in war-related industries (Downes 2006: 157–8; see also Gross 2010: 159; Valentino et al. 2010: 351); we provide the belligerents with crucial financial and other services; we support and sustain the soldiers who do the fighting; we pay our taxes and in democracies we vote. Our contributions to the state’s capacity over time give it the strength and support to concentrate on war.[21] If the state’s war is unjust, then many noncombatants are responsible for contributing to wrongful threats. If that is enough for them to lose their rights to life, then they are permissible targets.
McMahan (2011a) has sought to avert this troubling implication of his arguments by contending that almost all noncombatants on the unjust side (unjust noncombatants) are less responsible than all unjust combatants. But this involves applying a double standard, talking up the responsibility of combatants, while talking down that of noncombatants, and mistakes a central element in his account of liability to be killed. On his view, a person is liable to be killed in self- or other-defence in virtue of being, of those able to bear an unavoidable and indivisible harm, the one who is most responsible for this situation coming about (McMahan 2002, 2005b). Even if noncombatants are only minimally responsible for their states’ unjust wars—that is, they are not blameworthy, they merely voluntarily acted in a way that foreseeably contributed to this result—on McMahan’s view this is enough to make them liable to be killed, if doing so is necessary to save the lives of wholly innocent combatants and noncombatants on the just side (see especially McMahan 2009: 225).
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Unfortunately our website software limits each posting to 60,000 characters – accordingly this article is continued in the immediately-following post.
"War" from Stanford U's Encyclopedia of Philosophy - First Part
.
“Future Peace” is unique, even for a book that was promoted by the NYC Harvard Club – please see the Club’s webinar notice in the Reading Liberally “Original Proposal” at viewtopic.php?f=725&t=2295&sid=f075e339 ... 78d2f54dfe.
Its author is uniquely qualified to discuss the book’s sub-title: “Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War.”
Robert H. Latiff attended Notre Dame where he received his BS in physics on an Army scholarship and his MS and PhD in materials science on a National Science Foundation grant. He is also a graduate of the National Security Fellows Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
In 2006, he retired from the U.S. Air Force as a Major General for whose National Reconnaissance Office he directed advanced research, development, and engineering after commanding the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. He is a recipient of the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal and the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal.
Dr. Latiff now teaches at Notre Dame where he chairs the external advisory board of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. He is also a consultant, providing advice on advanced technology matters to corporate and government clients and to universities.
He is a member of (1) the Intelligence Community Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and (2) the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
**********
Accordingly, instead of the normal spate of book reviews, the following items are posted as reference materials –
(1) A 2/7/2014 NY Times article about how Gen/Prof Latiff came to teach Philosophy 20628 “The Ethics of Emerging Weapons Technology” at Notre Dame – the NYT article written by Samuel Freedman who writes the “On Religion” column for the NY Times and is a Professor at the Columbia U Graduate School of Journalism.
(2) A Wikipedia Article on the history of the Just War Doctrine which begins with a picture (unfortunately our website software does not accommodate pictures) of Saint Augustine with the caption “Saint Augustine was the first clear advocate of just-war theory.”
(3) A 4/24/2022 article PUBLISHED 2 MONTHS AFTER THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE by Catholic Conscience (a self-described Catholic non-partisan civic and political leadership and engagement organization) analyzing in detail the provisions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a recent encyclical by Pope Francis.
(4) And for our super-achievers, a 34-page article on “War” from Stanford University’s “Encyclopedia of Philosophy.”
“Future Peace” is unique, even for a book that was promoted by the NYC Harvard Club – please see the Club’s webinar notice in the Reading Liberally “Original Proposal” at viewtopic.php?f=725&t=2295&sid=f075e339 ... 78d2f54dfe.
Its author is uniquely qualified to discuss the book’s sub-title: “Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War.”
Robert H. Latiff attended Notre Dame where he received his BS in physics on an Army scholarship and his MS and PhD in materials science on a National Science Foundation grant. He is also a graduate of the National Security Fellows Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
In 2006, he retired from the U.S. Air Force as a Major General for whose National Reconnaissance Office he directed advanced research, development, and engineering after commanding the NORAD Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. He is a recipient of the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal and the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal.
Dr. Latiff now teaches at Notre Dame where he chairs the external advisory board of the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. He is also a consultant, providing advice on advanced technology matters to corporate and government clients and to universities.
He is a member of (1) the Intelligence Community Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and (2) the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
**********
Accordingly, instead of the normal spate of book reviews, the following items are posted as reference materials –
(1) A 2/7/2014 NY Times article about how Gen/Prof Latiff came to teach Philosophy 20628 “The Ethics of Emerging Weapons Technology” at Notre Dame – the NYT article written by Samuel Freedman who writes the “On Religion” column for the NY Times and is a Professor at the Columbia U Graduate School of Journalism.
(2) A Wikipedia Article on the history of the Just War Doctrine which begins with a picture (unfortunately our website software does not accommodate pictures) of Saint Augustine with the caption “Saint Augustine was the first clear advocate of just-war theory.”
(3) A 4/24/2022 article PUBLISHED 2 MONTHS AFTER THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE by Catholic Conscience (a self-described Catholic non-partisan civic and political leadership and engagement organization) analyzing in detail the provisions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a recent encyclical by Pope Francis.
(4) And for our super-achievers, a 34-page article on “War” from Stanford University’s “Encyclopedia of Philosophy.”
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- ↳ Discussion Outline – Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War by Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Robert Latiff – Feb 15
- ↳ Original Proposal – Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War by Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Robert Latiff – Feb 15
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- ↳ Reference Materials – “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe” by Prof. Niall Ferguson (husband of Ayaan Hirsi Ali) – Dec 14
- ↳ Discussion Outline – A Pox On Both Former Sen. Phil Gramm and Pres. Biden Re Jonathan Kozol’s “Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” – Nov 16
- ↳ Original Proposal – A Pox On Both Former Sen. Phil Gramm and Pres. Biden Re Jonathan Kozol’s “Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” – Nov 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – A Pox On Both Former Sen. Phil Gramm and Pres. Biden Re Jonathan Kozol’s “Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” – Nov 16
- ↳ Reference Materials – A Pox On Both Former Sen. Phil Gramm and Pres. Biden Re Jonathan Kozol’s “Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” – Nov 16
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green – Oct 19
- ↳ Original Proposal – Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green – Oct 19
- ↳ Participant Comments – Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green – Oct 19
- ↳ Reference Materials – Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green – Oct 19
- ↳ Discussion Outline – What We Owe The Future by Oxford U. Prof. William MacAskill – Sept 21
- ↳ Original Proposal – What We Owe The Future by Oxford U. Prof. William MacAskill – Sept 21
- ↳ Participant Comments – What We Owe The Future by Oxford U. Prof. William MacAskill – Sept 21
- ↳ Reference Materials – What We Owe The Future by Oxford U. Prof. William MacAskill – Sept 21
- ↳ Discussion Outline - “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults” by Prof. Mark Bauerlein - Aug 17
- ↳ Original Proposal - “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults” by Prof. Mark Bauerlein - Aug 17
- ↳ Participant Comments - “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults” by Prof. Mark Bauerlein - Aug 17
- ↳ Reference Materials - “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults” by Prof. Mark Bauerlein - Aug 17
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Climate Change and "How The World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going" by Prof. Vaclav Smil - July 20
- ↳ Original Proposal - Climate Change and "How The World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going" by Prof. Vaclav Smil - July 20
- ↳ Participant Comments - Climate Change and "How The World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going" by Prof. Vaclav Smil - July 20
- ↳ Reference Materials - Climate Change and "How The World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going" by Vaclav Smil - July 20
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents - Oprah’s Book Club – June 15
- ↳ Original Proposal – Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents - Oprah’s Book Club – June 15
- ↳ Participant Comments – Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents - Oprah’s Book Club – June 15
- ↳ Reference Materials – Caste: The Origins Of Our Discontents - Oprah’s Book Club – June 15
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win” by Peter Schweizer – May 18
- ↳ Original Proposal – “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win” by Peter Schweizer – May 18
- ↳ Participant Comments – “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win” by Peter Schweizer – May 18
- ↳ Reference Materials – “Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win” by Peter Schweizer – May 18
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Dying Concept of Citizenship & America’s Southern Border – April 20
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Dying Concept of Citizenship & America’s Southern Border – April 20
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Dying Concept of Citizenship & America’s Southern Border – April 20
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Dying Concept of Citizenship & America’s Southern Border – April 20
- ↳ Public-Policy Letters Sent to the European Union President & the NATO Secretary General – America’s 1994 Written & Signed Guarantee Of Ukraine’s Independence and Territorial Integrity For Ukraine Surrendering Its 1,900 Nuclear Missiles – March 16
- ↳ Discussion Outline – America’s 1994 Written & Signed Guarantee Of Ukraine’s Independence and Territorial Integrity For Ukraine Surrendering Its 1,900 Nuclear Missiles – March 16
- ↳ Original Proposal – America’s 1994 Written & Signed Guarantee Of Ukraine’s Independence and Territorial Integrity For Ukraine Surrendering Its 1,900 Nuclear Missiles – March 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – America’s 1994 Written & Signed Guarantee Of Ukraine’s Independence and Territorial Integrity For Ukraine Surrendering Its 1,900 Nuclear Missiles – March 16
- ↳ Short Quiz and Suggested Answers – America’s 1994 Written & Signed Guarantee Of Ukraine’s Independence and Territorial Integrity For Ukraine Surrendering Its 1,900 Nuclear Missiles – March 16
- ↳ Reference Materials – America’s 1994 Written & Signed Guarantee Of Ukraine’s Independence and Territorial Integrity For Ukraine Surrendering Its 1,900 Nuclear Missiles – March 16
- ↳ Discussion Outline – NYC Harvard Club Book Promotion – “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” – Feb 16
- ↳ Original Proposal – NYC Harvard Club Book Promotion – “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” – Feb 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – NYC Harvard Club Book Promotion - “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” – Feb 16
- ↳ Discussion Outline – The Deficit Myth by Democratic Party Economic Guru, Prof. Stephanie Kelton – Jan 19
- ↳ Reference Materials – NYC Harvard Club Book Promotion – “Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote” – Feb 16
- ↳ Original Proposal – The Deficit Myth by Democratic Party Economic Guru, Prof. Stephanie Kelton – Jan 19
- ↳ Discussion Outline – President Obama’s Dept of Energy Under-Secretary for Science (Prof. Steven Koonin) on “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” – Dec 8
- ↳ Participant Comments – The Deficit Myth by Democratic Party Economic Guru, Prof. Stephanie Kelton – Jan 19
- ↳ Reference Materials – The Deficit Myth by Democratic Party Economic Guru, Prof. Stephanie Kelton – Jan 19
- ↳ Original Proposal – President Obama’s Dept of Energy Under-Secretary for Science (Prof. Steven Koonin) on “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” – Dec 8
- ↳ Participant Comments – President Obama’s Dept of Energy Under-Secretary for Science (Prof. Steven Koonin) on “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” – Dec 8
- ↳ Reference Materials – President Obama’s Dept of Energy Under-Secretary for Science (Prof. Steven Koonin) on “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” – Dec 8
- ↳ CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS SECTION
- ↳ Discussion Outline – An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science Of The Immune System – Nov 10
- ↳ Original Proposal – An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science Of The Immune System – Nov 10
- ↳ Participant Comments – An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science Of The Immune System – Nov 10
- ↳ Reference Materials – An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science Of The Immune System – Nov 10
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Revisiting The Issue Of Charter Schools: Stanford University vs. Stanford’s Hoover Institution – Oct 13
- ↳ Original Proposal – Revisiting The Issue Of Charter Schools: Stanford University vs. Stanford’s Hoover Institution – Oct 13
- ↳ Participant Comments – Revisiting The Issue Of Charter Schools: Stanford University vs. Stanford’s Hoover Institution – Oct 13
- ↳ Reference Materials – Revisiting The Issue Of Charter Schools: Stanford University vs. Stanford’s Hoover Institution – Oct 13
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell – Sept 8
- ↳ Original Proposal – Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell – Sept 8
- ↳ Participant Comments – Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell – Sept 8
- ↳ Reference Materials – Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell – Sept 8
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Non-Partisan Public-Policy Issues of Whether, For Example, Michael Lewis’ “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” Is A Classic Political “Hit Piece” and Whether, As Such, It Should Be (vs. Is) Protected by Freedom Of Speech - Aug 11
- ↳ Original Proposal – The Non-Partisan Public-Policy Issues of Whether, For Example, Michael Lewis’ “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” Is A Classic Political “Hit Piece” and Whether, As Such, It Should Be (vs. Is) Protected by “Freedom Of Speech” – Aug 11
- ↳ Participant Comments – The Non-Partisan Public-Policy Issues of Whether, For Example, Michael Lewis’ “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” Is A Classic Political “Hit Piece” and Whether, As Such, It Should Be (vs. Is) Protected by Freedom Of Speech – Aug 11
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” by Peter Wood – July 14
- ↳ Original Proposal – “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” by Peter Wood – July 14
- ↳ Reference Materials – The Non-Partisan Public-Policy Issues of Whether, For Example, Michael Lewis’ “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story” Is A Classic Political “Hit Piece” and Whether, As Such, It Should Be (vs. Is) Protected by Freedom Of Speech – Aug 11
- ↳ Participant Comments – “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” by Peter Wood – July 14
- ↳ Reference Materials – “1620: A Critical Response To The 1619 Project” by Peter Wood – July 14
- ↳ Meeting Report – “Predict & Surveil: Data, Discretion & the Future of Policing” by Prof. Sarah Brayne – June 9
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “Predict & Surveil: Data, Discretion & the Future of Policing” by Prof. Sarah Brayne – June 9
- ↳ Original Proposal – “Predict & Surveil: Data, Discretion & the Future of Policing” by Prof. Sarah Brayne – June 9
- ↳ Participant Comments – “Predict & Surveil: Data, Discretion & the Future of Policing” by Prof. Sarah Brayne – June 9
- ↳ Resource Materials – “Predict & Surveil: Data, Discretion & the Future of Policing” by Prof. Sarah Brayne – June 9
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates – May 12
- ↳ Original Proposal – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates – May 12
- ↳ Participant Comments – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates – May 12
- ↳ Reference Materials – “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates – May 12
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process” by Prof. Alan Dershowitz – April 7
- ↳ Original Proposal – “Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process” by Prof. Alan Dershowitz – April 7
- ↳ Participant Comments – “Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process” by Prof. Alan Dershowitz – April 7
- ↳ Reference Materials – “Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process” by Prof. Alan Dershowitz – April 7
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “The New Map: Energy, Climate & the Clash of Nations” by Pulitzer-Prize Winner Daniel Yergin – March 10
- ↳ Original Proposal – “The New Map: Energy, Climate & the Clash of Nations” by Pulitzer-Prize Winner Daniel Yergin – March 10
- ↳ Participant Comments – “The New Map: Energy, Climate & the Clash of Nations” by Pulitzer-Prize Winner Daniel Yergin – March 10
- ↳ Resource Materials – “The New Map: Energy, Climate & the Clash of Nations” by Pulitzer-Prize Winner Daniel Yergin – March 10
- ↳ Discussion Outline - “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Prof. Steven Pinker – Feb 10
- ↳ Reference Materials - “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Prof. Steven Pinker – Feb 10
- ↳ Original Proposal - “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Prof. Steven Pinker – Feb 10
- ↳ Participant Comments - “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Prof. Steven Pinker – Feb 10
- ↳ Meeting Report – Civilization: The West and the Rest by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Jan 13
- ↳ Original Proposal – Civilization: The West and the Rest by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Jan 13
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Civilization: The West and the Rest by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Jan 13
- ↳ Participant Comments – Civilization: The West and the Rest by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Jan 13
- ↳ Reference Materials – Civilization: The West and the Rest by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Jan 13
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Great Society: A New History by Amity Shlaes - Dec 9
- ↳ Original Proposal - Great Society: A New History by Amity Shlaes - Dec 9
- ↳ Participant Comments - Great Society: A New History by Amity Shlaes - Dec 9
- ↳ Reference Materials - Great Society: A New History by Amity Shlaes - Dec 9
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “The Square and The Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Nov 11
- ↳ Original Proposal – “The Square and The Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Nov 11
- ↳ Participant Comments – “The Square and The Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Nov 11
- ↳ Reference Materials – “The Square and The Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” by Prof. Niall Ferguson – Nov 11
- ↳ Discussion Outline – The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs and Behaviors By Stanford U. Prof Matthew Jackson – Oct 14
- ↳ Original Proposal – The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs and Behaviors By Stanford U. Prof Matthew Jackson – Oct 14
- ↳ Participant Comments – The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs and Behaviors By Stanford U. Prof Matthew Jackson – Oct 14
- ↳ Reference Materials – The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs and Behaviors By Stanford U. Prof Matthew Jackson – Oct 14
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King by Prof. Peniel Joseph - Sep 9
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King by Prof. Peniel Joseph - Sep 9
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King by Prof. Peniel Joseph - Sep 9
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King by Prof. Peniel Joseph - Sep 9
- ↳ Discussion Outline – "Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope" by Pulitzer-Prize Winners Sheryl WuDunn and Husband, NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof – Aug 12
- ↳ Original Proposal – "Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope" by Pulitzer-Prize Winners Sheryl WuDunn and Husband, NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof – Aug 12
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “The Age of Addiction” by Prof. David Courtwright – July 8
- ↳ Participant Comments – "Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope" by Pulitzer-Prize Winners Sheryl WuDunn and Husband, NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof – Aug 12
- ↳ Reference Materials – "Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope" by Pulitzer-Prize Winners Sheryl WuDunn and Husband, NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof – Aug 12
- ↳ Participant Comments – “The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business” by Prof. David Courtwright – July 8
- ↳ Original Proposal – “The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business” by Prof. David Courtwright – July 8
- ↳ Reference Materials – “The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business” by Prof. David Courtwright – July 8
- ↳ 6/3/2020: CALL TO ACTION – ONLY 10 MINUTES NEEDED FOR YOU TO PARTICIPATE – “SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION” E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSE OF RACISM (VS. ONLY A MERE SYMPTOM) – AMERICA’S PERMANENT 30% UNDER-CASTE
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Jonathan Kozol “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” and Free Tuition for Public Colleges and Vocational Schools – June 3
- ↳ Original Proposal – Jonathan Kozol “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” and Free Tuition for Public Colleges and Vocational Schools – Mtg Date TBD
- ↳ Participant Comments – Jonathan Kozol “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” and Free Tuition for Public Colleges and Vocational Schools – Mtg Date TBD
- ↳ Reference Materials – Jonathan Kozol “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” and Free Tuition for Public Colleges and Vocational Schools – June 3
- ↳ Mail Campaign to ABC’s The View – Money in Politics – March 18
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Money in Politics – March 18
- ↳ Original Proposal - Money in Politics: Michael Bloomberg & Tom Steyer, et al. - March 18
- ↳ Participant Comments - Money in Politics: Michael Bloomberg & Tom Steyer, et al. - March 18
- ↳ Meeting WED Evening Feb 19 – Proposed E-mail Campaign Re “Hunger in America” – Your Opportunity To Strike A Blow For BASIC HUMAN DECENCY
- ↳ Feb 19 Meeting Report – Proposed E-mail Campaign Re “Hunger in America”
- ↳ Original Proposal – Utah Taxing Groceries of Our Neighbors Living on Less Than $2.00/Day – Feb 19
- ↳ Participant Comments – Utah Taxing Groceries of Our Neighbors Living on Less Than $2.00/Day – Feb 19
- ↳ Reference Materials – Utah Taxing Groceries of Our Neighbors Living on Less Than $2.00/Day – Feb 19
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED FOR YOU TO PARTICIPATE – “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO SOLVE THE PALESTINIAN ISSUE (AND AVOID “THE TWILIGHT OF THE HUMANS” - Jan 15
- ↳ Original Proposal – “REPRISE: A Marshall-Type Plan For Palestinians” – Jan 15
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – “REPRISE: A Marshall-Type Plan For Palestinians” – Jan 15
- ↳ Participant Comments – “REPRISE: A Marshall-Type Plan For Palestinians” – Jan 15
- ↳ Reference Materials – “REPRISE: A Marshall-Type Plan For Palestinians” – Jan 15
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT $86 BILLION/YEAR BY ADOPTING MEDICARE-FOR-ALL – (only 5 minutes needed to participate)
- ↳ Discussion Outline – “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care And How To Fix It” by Johns Hopkins Surgeon and Prof. of Health Policy Marty Markary – Dec 11
- ↳ Participant Comments – “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care And How To Fix It” by Johns Hopkins Surgeon and Prof. of Health Policy Marty Markary – Dec 11
- ↳ Original Proposal – “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care And How To Fix It” by Johns Hopkins Surgeon and Prof. of Health Policy Marty Markary – Dec 11
- ↳ Reference Materials – “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care And How To Fix It” by Johns Hopkins Surgeon and Prof. of Health Policy Marty Markary – Dec 11
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO PROTECT POSSIBLE GLOBAL-WARMING SOLUTION (HYDROGEN EXTRACTION) FROM BEING KILLED!!! – (only 5 minutes needed to participate)
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Possible Global Warming Solution (Hydrogen Extraction) In Danger Of Being Killed!!! - Nov 13
- ↳ Original Proposal - Possible Global Warming Solution (Hydrogen Extraction) In Danger Of Being Killed!!! - Nov 13
- ↳ Participant Comments - Possible Global Warming Solution (Hydrogen Extraction) In Danger Of Being Killed!!! - Nov 13
- ↳ Reference Materials - Possible Global Warming Solution (Hydrogen Extraction) In Danger Of Being Killed!!! - Nov 13
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - “Tech Titans Of China: How China’s Tech Sector Is Challenging The World By Innovating Faster, Working Harder and Going Global by Rebecca A. Fannin – Oct 16
- ↳ Original Proposal - “Tech Titans Of China: How China’s Tech Sector Is Challenging The World By Innovating Faster, Working Harder and Going Global by Rebecca A. Fannin – Oct 16
- ↳ Participant Comments - “Tech Titans Of China: How China’s Tech Sector Is Challenging The World By Innovating Faster, Working Harder and Going Global by Rebecca A. Fannin - Oct 16
- ↳ Reference Materials - “Tech Titans Of China: How China’s Tech Sector Is Challenging The World By Innovating Faster, Working Harder and Going Global by Rebecca A. Fannin - Oct 16
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – Six-Degrees-Of-Separation-Email-Campaign – A Suggestion To President Trump Re How To Support the United Nations 19-year Campaign Against “Trafficking In Persons, Especially Women and Children” – only 5 minutes needed to participate
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery - Sep 18
- ↳ Original Proposal – Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery – Sep 18
- ↳ Participant Comments – Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery – Sep 18
- ↳ Reference Materials – Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery – Sep 18
- ↳ Participant Comments – Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – July 31
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – July 31
- ↳ Original Proposal – Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – July 31
- ↳ Reference Materials – Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – July 31
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline -- "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” -- June 13
- ↳ Original Proposal -- "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” -- June 13
- ↳ Short Quiz -- "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” -- June 13
- ↳ Reference Materials -- "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics” -- June 13
- ↳ The Quartet – Three E-mail Campaigns “Approved” – May 16
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - "The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789" by Prof. Joseph J. Ellis – May 16
- ↳ Original Proposal - "The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789" by Prof. Joseph J. Ellis – May 16
- ↳ Reference Materials – "The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789" by Prof. Joseph J. Ellis – May 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – "The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789" by Prof. Joseph J. Ellis – May 16
- ↳ Cancellation of Official Status of April 11 Meeting on Joseph Califano’s “Our Damaged Democracy: We The People Must Act” + John Karls’ Research on Harvard as “Cambridge University in New England” 1636-1816
- ↳ Original Proposal - Our Damaged Democracy: We The People Must Act by Joseph Califano Jr. - April 11
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO HOLD CHINA RESPONSIBLE FOR NORTH KOREAN ACTIONS (only 5 minutes needed to participate)
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - “American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power and the End of History” by Prof. Salvatore Babones - March 14
- ↳ Original Proposal - “American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power and the End of History” by Prof. Salvatore Babones - March 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - “American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power and the End of History” by Prof. Salvatore Babones - March 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - “American Tianxia: Chinese Money, American Power and the End of History” by Prof. Salvatore Babones - March 14
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” - Feb 7
- ↳ Original Proposal - “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” - Feb 7
- ↳ Participant Comments - “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” - Feb 7
- ↳ Reference Materials - “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America” - Feb 7
- ↳ Meeting Cancellation - The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism - Jan 10
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism - Jan 10
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue Collar Conservatism - Jan 10
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Dec 13
- ↳ Original Proposal - Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Dec 13
- ↳ Participant Comments - Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Dec 13
- ↳ Reference Materials - Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Dec 13
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning by the American Right: A Journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide - Nov 8
- ↳ Original Proposal - Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning by the American Right: A Journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide - Nov 8
- ↳ Participant Comments - Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning by the American Right: A Journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide - Nov 8
- ↳ Reference Materials - Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning by the American Right: A Journey to the Heart of Our Political Divide - Nov 8
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System by T.R. Reid – Oct 4
- ↳ Original Proposal - A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System by T.R. Reid – Oct 4
- ↳ Participant Comments - A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System by T.R. Reid – Oct 4
- ↳ Reference Materials - A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System by T.R. Reid – Oct 4
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - The War On Cops: How the New Attack on Law & Order Makes Everyone Less Safe by Heather MacDonald - Sep 6
- ↳ Original Proposal - The War On Cops: How the New Attack on Law & Order Makes Everyone Less Safe by Heather MacDonald - Sep 6
- ↳ Participant Comments - The War On Cops: How the New Attack on Law & Order Makes Everyone Less Safe by Heather MacDonald - Sep 6
- ↳ Reference Materials - The War On Cops: How the New Attack on Law & Order Makes Everyone Less Safe by Heather MacDonald - Sep 6
- ↳ Meeting Cancellation - American Amnesia: How The War On American Government Led Us To Forget What Made America Prosper – For Aug 9
- ↳ Original Proposal - American Amnesia: How The War On American Government Led Us To Forget What Made America Prosper – For Aug 9
- ↳ Reference Materials - American Amnesia: How The War On American Government Led Us To Forget What Made America Prosper – For Aug 9
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN RE SAVING THE U.S. GOV $300 BILLION/YEAR BY ENACTING “MEDICARE FOR ALL” – (only 5 minutes needed to participate)
- ↳ Original Proposal - An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal – For July 12
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal – For July 12
- ↳ Participant Comments - An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal – For July 12
- ↳ Reference Materials - An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal – For July 12
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks – June 7
- ↳ Original Proposal - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks – June 7
- ↳ Participant Comments - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks – June 7
- ↳ Reference Materials - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything by Rosa Brooks – June 7
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Authoritarian Rule by Our Intelligence Services – May 10
- ↳ Original Proposal – Authoritarian Rule by Our Intelligence Services – May 10
- ↳ Participant Comments – Authoritarian Rule by Our Intelligence Services – May 10
- ↳ Reference Materials – Authoritarian Rule by Our Intelligence Services – May 10
- ↳ April 12 Meeting Cancellation
- ↳ Original Proposal - Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide To Thriving in an Age of Accelerations – For April 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide To Thriving in an Age of Accelerations – For April 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide To Thriving in an Age of Accelerations – For April 12th
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Killing Millions of Sesame Street Miss Piggy’s For The Human Organs – March 8
- ↳ Original Proposal – Killing Millions of Sesame Street Miss Piggy’s For The Human Organs – March 8
- ↳ Participant Comments – Killing Millions of Sesame Street Miss Piggy’s For The Human Organs – March 8
- ↳ Original Proposal Reference Materials – Killing Millions of Sesame Street Miss Piggy’s For The Human Organs – March 8
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - OPPOSING THE WANTON DESTRUCTION OF GREAT SALT LAKE – FEB 8TH
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Mormon Church Condoning The Wanton Destruction Of Great Salt Lake – Feb 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Mormon Church Condoning The Wanton Destruction Of Great Salt Lake – Feb 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Mormon Church Condoning The Wanton Destruction Of Great Salt Lake – Feb 8th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Mormon Church Condoning The Wanton Destruction Of Great Salt Lake – Feb 8th
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End – Jan 11
- ↳ Original Proposal – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End – Jan 11
- ↳ Participant Comments – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End – Jan 11
- ↳ Reference Materials – Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End – Jan 11
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – Dec 14
- ↳ Original Proposal - Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – Dec 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – Dec 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – Dec 14
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State – Nov 16
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State – Nov 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State – Nov 16
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State – Nov 16
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why - Oct 19
- ↳ Participant Comments – Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why - Oct 19
- ↳ Original Proposal - Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why - Oct 19
- ↳ Reference Materials – Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why - Oct 19
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis - Sep 14
- ↳ Original Proposal – Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis - Sep 14
- ↳ Participant Comments – Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis - Sep 14
- ↳ Discussion Outline - San Bernardino and The F.B.I. vs. Apple – Aug 10
- ↳ Reference Materials – Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis - Sep 14
- ↳ Original Proposal – San Bernardino and The F.B.I. vs. Apple – Aug 10
- ↳ Original Proposal – How The Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and The Threat To Democracy – July 13
- ↳ Participant Comments – San Bernardino and The F.B.I. vs. Apple – Aug 10
- ↳ Reference Materials – San Bernardino and The F.B.I. vs. Apple – Aug 10
- ↳ Reference Materials – How The Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and The Threat To Democracy – July 13
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – 5 Easy Theses: Commonsense Solutions to America’s Greatest Economic Challenges – June 15
- ↳ Cancellation – How The Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and The Threat To Democracy – July 13
- ↳ Original Proposal – 5 Easy Theses: Commonsense Solutions to America’s Greatest Economic Challenges – June 15
- ↳ Participant Comments - 5 Easy Theses: Commonsense Solutions to America’s Greatest Economic Challenges – June 15
- ↳ Reference Materials – 5 Easy Theses: Commonsense Solutions to America’s Greatest Economic Challenges – June 15
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – May 18
- ↳ Original Proposal – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – May 18
- ↳ Participant Comments – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – May 18
- ↳ Reference Materials – Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – May 18
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right – April 20
- ↳ Original Proposal – Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right – April 20
- ↳ Participant Comments – Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right – April 20
- ↳ Reference Materials – Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right – April 20
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – March 16
- ↳ Original Proposal - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – March 16
- ↳ Reference Materials - Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – March 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – March 16
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Capitalism vs. The Climate – Feb 17
- ↳ Participant Comments – Capitalism vs. The Climate – Feb 17
- ↳ Original Proposal – Capitalism vs. The Climate – Feb 17
- ↳ Reference Materials - Capitalism vs. The Climate – Feb 17
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Jan 13
- ↳ Original Proposal – The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Jan 13
- ↳ Participant Comments – The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Jan 13
- ↳ Reference Materials – The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Jan 13
- ↳ Original Proposal – Saving Capitalism by Robert Reich – Dec 16
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Saving Capitalism by Robert Reich – Dec 16
- ↳ Participant Comments – Saving Capitalism by Robert Reich – Dec 16
- ↳ Reference Materials - Saving Capitalism by Robert Reich – Dec 16
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession - Nov 18
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession - Nov 18
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession - Nov 18
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession - Nov 18
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller – Oct 14
- ↳ Original Proposal - Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller – Oct 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller – Oct 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller – Oct 14
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - The Impending Adverse Impact Of New Technology on Employment and Income Inequality – Sep 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Impending Adverse Impact Of New Technology on Employment and Income Inequality – Sep 9th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Impending Adverse Impact Of New Technology on Employment and Income Inequality – Sep 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Impending Adverse Impact Of New Technology on Employment and Income Inequality – Sep 9th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Joan Walsh’s “What’s the Matter with White People?” – Aug 12
- ↳ Participant Comments – Joan Walsh’s “What’s the Matter with White People?” – Aug 12
- ↳ Original Proposal – Joan Walsh’s “What’s the Matter with White People?” – Aug 12
- ↳ Reference Materials – Joan Walsh’s “What’s the Matter with White People?” – Aug 12
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran – July 15
- ↳ Original Proposal – The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran – July 15
- ↳ Participant Comments – The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran – July 15
- ↳ Reference Materials – The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran – July 15
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN – POPE FRANCIS AND 23% OF U.S. CHILDREN IN POVERTY
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - The Hoax of the School-Privatization Movement - June 17
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Hoax of the School-Privatization Movement - June 17
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Why Foreign-Government Corruption Threatens Global Security – May 13
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Hoax of the School-Privatization Movement - June 17……………………………………… AMERICA’S APARTHEID “JUSTICE” SYSTEM -- BALTIMORE, AMERICAN INNER-CITIES AND TOM BRADY
- ↳ Original Proposal - Why Foreign-Government Corruption Threatens Global Security – May 13
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Hoax of the School-Privatization Movement - June 17
- ↳ Participant Comments - Why Foreign-Government Corruption Threatens Global Security – May 13
- ↳ Reference Materials - Why Foreign-Government Corruption Threatens Global Security – May 13
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Corruption in America - April 8
- ↳ Original Proposal - Corruption in America – April 8
- ↳ Participant Comments - Corruption in America – April 8
- ↳ Reference Materials - Corruption in America – April 8
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights and President Obama’s Military Force Authorization - March 11
- ↳ Original Proposal - Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights and President Obama’s Military Force Authorization - March 11
- ↳ Original Proposal - Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America - Feb 11
- ↳ Participant Comments - Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights and President Obama’s Military Force Authorization - March 11
- ↳ Reference Materials - Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights and President Obama’s Military Force Authorization - March 11
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portraith of a Troubled America - Feb 11
- ↳ Participant Comments - Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America – Feb 11
- ↳ Reference Materials - Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America – Feb 11
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Hillary Distancing Herself From Pres. Obama Re The Islamic State - For Sep 3
- ↳ Original Proposal - Hillary Distancing Herself From Pres. Obama Re The Islamic State - For Sep 3
- ↳ Participant Comments - Hillary Distancing Herself From Pres. Obama Re The Islamic State - For Sep 3
- ↳ Reference Materials - Hillary Distancing Herself From Pres. Obama Re The Islamic State - For Sep 3
- ↳ Original Proposal - American Exceptionalism: Fact or Fiction??? - Aug 6th
- ↳ Participant Comments - American Exceptionalism: Fact or Fiction??? - Aug 6th
- ↳ MEETING CANCELLATION + SABBATICAL
- ↳ MEETING CANCELLATION + SABBATICAL (Continued)
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Hoax of the School-Privatization Movement - May 7th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline -- NUCLEAR FUSION AND 50 MORE YEARS WANDERING IN THE WILDERNESS SHUNNING THE PROMISED LAND -- Apr 9th
- ↳ Do-It-Yourself-Six-Degrees-Of-Separation-Email-Campaign -- Nuclear Fusion and 50 More Years Wandering in the Wilderness Shunning the Promised Land
- ↳ Participant Comments -- Nuclear Fusion and 50 More Years Wandering in the Wilderness Shunning the Promised Land -- April 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials -- Nuclear Fusion and 50 More Years Wandering in the Wilderness Shunning the Promised Land -- April 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal -- Nuclear Fusion and 50 More Years Wandering in the Wilderness Shunning the Promised Land -- April 9th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era – March 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era – March 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era – March 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era – March 12th
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA – RENEWING 1968 EXECUTIVE ORDER 11387 TO HALT THE EXPORT OF AMERICAN JOBS
- ↳ Discussion Outline – 12 Years A Slave, the 1853 autobiography of a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington DC in 1841 and sold into slavery, which became a famous part of the Abolitionist Movement – Feb 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal – 12 Years A Slave, the 1853 autobiography of a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington DC in 1841 and sold into slavery, which became a famous part of the Abolitionist Movement – Feb 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments – 12 Years A Slave, the 1853 autobiography of a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington DC in 1841 and sold into slavery, which became a famous part of the Abolitionist Movement – Feb 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials – 12 Years A Slave, the 1853 autobiography of a free black man who was kidnapped in Washington DC in 1841 and sold into slavery, which became a famous part of the Abolitionist Movement – Feb 12th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the U.S., and An Epic History of Misunderstanding – Jan 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the U.S., and An Epic History of Misunderstanding – Jan 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the U.S., and An Epic History of Misunderstanding – Jan 8th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the U.S., and An Epic History of Misunderstanding – Jan 8th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline – Third-Trimester Abortions – Dec. 11th
- ↳ Original Proposal – Third-Trimester Abortions – Dec. 11th
- ↳ Participant Comments – Third-Trimester Abortions – Dec. 11th
- ↳ Reference Materials – Third-Trimester Abortions – Dec. 11th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Will Ayatollah Khomenei Destroy The World??? - Nov 13
- ↳ Original Proposal - Who Is Ayatollah Khamenei by an Iranian Journalist/Dissident - Nov 13
- ↳ Participant Comments - Who Is Ayatollah Khamenei by an Iranian Journalist/Dissident - Nov 13
- ↳ Reference Materials - Who Is Ayatollah Khamenei by an Iranian Journalist/Dissident - Nov 13
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea - Oct 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea - Oct 9th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea - Oct 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea - Oct 9th
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THORIUM AS THE GREEN ENERGY SOURCE FOR THE FUTURE WHICH WILL, INTER ALIA, SOLVE OCEANIC ACIDIFICATION
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA REGARDING THE ENFORCEMENT OF OCEAN CONSERVATION
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Oceana by Ted Danson - Sep 11
- ↳ Original Proposal - Oceana by Ted Danson - Sep 11
- ↳ Participant Comments - Oceana by Ted Danson - Sep 11
- ↳ Reference Materials - Oceana by Ted Danson - Sep 11
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Our Current House-Of-Cards National Banking System - Aug 14
- ↳ Original Proposal - Our Current House-Of-Cards National Banking System - Aug 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - Our Current House-Of-Cards National Banking System - Aug 14
- ↳ ELLEN BIRRELL & JIM HUTCHINS – RSVP’S FOR AUG 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - Our Current House-Of-Cards National Banking System - Aug 14
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Thistle and The Drone - July 10th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Thistle and The Drone - July 10th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Thistle and The Drone - July 10th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Thistle and The Drone - July 10th
- ↳ Meeting Cancellation - The New Digital Age by Google's Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen - June 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The New Digital Age by Google's Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen - June 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The New Digital Age by Google's Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen - June 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The New Digital Age by Google's Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen - June 12th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Federal Bailouts of Illinois and Detroit, Etc., Etc., Etc. - May 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Federal Bailouts of Illinois and Detroit, Etc., Etc., Etc. - May 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Federal Bailouts of Illinois and Detroit, Etc., Etc., Etc. – May 8th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Salt-Sugar-Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us – April 10th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Federal Bailouts of Illinois and Detroit, Etc., Etc., Etc. – May 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Salt-Sugar-Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us – April 10th
- ↳ Participant Comments – Salt-Sugar-Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us – April 10th
- ↳ Reference Materials – Salt-Sugar-Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us – April 10th
- ↳ UNOFFICIAL SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA REGARDING ANNUAL DEFICITS AND ACCUMULATED DEBT
- ↳ Discussion Outline - How To Regain America's Competitive Edge And Boost Our Global Standing - March 13th
- ↳ Original Proposal – How To Regain America’s Competitive Edge And Boost Our Global Standing – March 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments - How To Regain America’s Competitive Edge And Boost Our Global Standing – March 13th
- ↳ Reference Materials - How To Regain America’s Competitive Edge And Boost Our Global Standing – March 13th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - John Brennan's Nomination To Head The CIA - Feb 6th
- ↳ Original Proposal - John Brennan's Nomination To Head The CIA - Feb 6th
- ↳ Participant Comments - John Brennan's Nomination To Head The CIA - Feb 6th
- ↳ Reference Materials - John Brennan's Nomination To Head The CIA - Feb 6th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Assisted Suicide - Jan 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Assisted Suicide - Jan 9th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Assisted Suicide - Jan 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Assisted Suicide - Jan 9th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - It's Even Worse Than It Looks by Mann + Ornstein - Dec 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - It's Even Worse Than It Looks By Mann + Ornstein - Dec 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - It's Even Worse Than It Looks By Mann + Ornstein - Dec 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - It's Even Worse Than It Looks By Mann + Ornstein - Dec 12th
- ↳ SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO PRINCETON ECONOMICS NOBEL-LAUREATE PROF. AND NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST PAUL KRUGMAN – YOUR HELP DESPERATELY NEEDED TO AVERT ANOTHER ECONOMIC MELTDOWN - ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The Price of Inequality - Nov. 14th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Price of Inequality - November 14th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Price of Inequality - November 14th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Price of Inequality - November 14th
- ↳ SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO D.O.E. SECRETARY CHU – R&D FOR THORIUM, THE GREEN ENERGY SOURCE FOR THE FUTURE - ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Thorium: The Green Energy Source For The Future – October 10th
- ↳ Original Proposal – Thorium: The Green Energy Source For The Future – October 10th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Thorium: The Green Energy Source For The Future – October 10th
- ↳ SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN FOR PROSECUTION OF BILL AND MELINDA GATES AT THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT FOR "CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY" (only 5 minutes needed to participate)
- ↳ Reference Materials - Thorium: The Green Energy Source For The Future – October 10th
- ↳ Discussion Outline – DOES CALLING A RATTLESNAKE A CANARY SOLVE THE PROBLEM IF THE “CANARY” BITES YOU??? – September 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Gates Foundation Crimes Against US Education Policy – September 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Gates Foundation Crimes Against US Education Policy – September 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Gates Foundation Crimes Against US Education Policy – September 12th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Winner-Take-All-Politics – August 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal – Winner-Take-All-Politics – August 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments – Winner-Take-All-Politics – August 8th
- ↳ Reference Materials – Winner-Take-All-Politics – August 8th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Gates Foundation's "Crimes Against Humanity" - July 11th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - July 11th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - July 11th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - July 11th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - How Invisible Policies Undermine American Democracy - June 13th
- ↳ Original Proposal - How Invisible Governmental Policies Undermine American Democracy - June 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments - How Invisible Governmental Policies Undermine American Democracy - June 13th
- ↳ Discussion Outline -- Merchants of Doubt -- May 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - How Invisible Governmental Policies Undermine American Democracy - June 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments -- Merchants of Doubt -- May 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal -- Merchants of Doubt -- May 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Merchants of Doubt - May 9th
- ↳ Discussion Outline -- The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government -- April 11th
- ↳ Original Proposal -- The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government -- April 11th
- ↳ Participant Comments -- The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government -- April 11th
- ↳ Reference Materials -- The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government -- April 11th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Insight Into Life In North Korea - The Orphan Master's Son by Prof. Adam Johnson - March 14th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Insight Into Life In North Korea - The Orphan Master's Son by Prof. Adam Johnson - March 14th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Insight Into Life In North Korea - The Orphan Master's Son by Prof. Adam Johnson - March 14th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Insight Into Life In North Korea - The Orphan Master's Son by Prof. Adam Johnson - March 14th
- ↳ Discussion Outline – Real Politik (aka National Interest) and Libya vs. Iran -- Feb 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments -- Real Politik (aka National Interest) and Libya vs. Iran -- Feb 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal -- Real Politik (aka National Interest) and Libya vs. Iran -- Feb 8th
- ↳ Reference Materials -- Real Politik (aka National Interest) and Libya vs. Iran -- Feb 8th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History Of The Financial Crisis - Jan 11th
- ↳ Original Proposal - All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History Of The Financial Crisis - Jan11
- ↳ Participant Comments - All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History Of The Financial Crisis - Jan 11
- ↳ Reference Materials - All The Devils Are Here: The Hidden History Of The Financial Crisis - Jan 11
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION -- "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN = TRillions Being Printed To Bail Out Foreign Banks and Governments -- (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Balanced-Budget Amendments & Redeeming National Debt With “Wallpaper” In Both Europe and the U.S. - December 14th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Balanced-Budget Amendments & Redeeming National Debt With “Wallpaper” In Both Europe and the U.S. - December 14th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Balanced-Budget Amendments & Redeeming National Debt With “Wallpaper” In Both Europe and the U.S. - December 14th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Balanced-Budget Amendments & Redeeming National Debt With “Wallpaper” In Both Europe and the U.S. - December 14th
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION -- "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN = Benefiting American Taxpayers For The Scientific Discoveries Of Basic Research They Have Financed -- (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
- ↳ Discussion Outline - That Used To Be Us By Thomas Friedman - Nov 9th
- ↳ Participant Comments - That Used To Be Us By Thomas Friedman - Nov 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal - That Used To Be Us By Thomas Friedman - Nov 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - That Used To Be Us By Thomas Friedman - Nov 9th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Can The Middle Class Be Saved - Oct 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Can The Middle Class Be Saved? - Oct 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Can The Middle Class Be Saved - Oct 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Can The Middle Class Be Saved? - Oct 12th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Even Silence Has An End by Ingrid Betencourt - Sep 14th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Even Silence Has An End by Ingrid Betencourt - Sep 14th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Even Silence Has An End by Ingrid Betancourt - Sep 14th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Even Silence Has An End by Ingrid Betancourt - Sep 14th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour - August 10th
- ↳ Original Proposal – Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour – August 10th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour - August 10th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour - August 10th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - America's Climate Problem, The Way Forward - July 13th
- ↳ Original Proposal - America's Climate Problem, The Way Forward - July 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments - America's Climate Problem, The Way Forward - July 13th
- ↳ Reference Materials - America's Climate Problem, The Way Forward - July 13th
- ↳ Post-Meeting Discussion - Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power - June 15th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power - June 15th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power - June 15th
- ↳ DO-IT-YOURSELF SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION-E-MAIL-CAMPAIGN = Insuring The Survival Of The Democratic Party Following A Nuclear Attack On The U.S. By Terrorists - ONLY-5-MINUTES-REQUIRED-TO-PARTICIPATE
- ↳ Participant Comments - Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power - June 15th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power - June 15th
- ↳ SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION-E-MAIL-CAMPAIGNS = Taxing-Corporate-Profits-From-Exporting-American-Jobs + Benefitting-American-Taxpayers-For-The-Scientific-Discoveries-Of-Basic-Research-They-Have-Financed - ONLY-5-MINUTES-REQUIRED-TO-PARTICIPATE
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Debtor Nation: The History Of America In Red Ink - May 11th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Debtor Nation: The History Of America In Red Ink - for May 11th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Debtor Nation: The History Of America In Red Ink - for May 11th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink - for May 11th
- ↳ DO-IT-YOURSELF SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN – Apr.13th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - President Obama’s Nuclear Stand Post-Japan - April 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments - President Obama’s Nuclear Stand Post-Japan - April 13th
- ↳ Original Proposal - President Obama’s Nuclear Stand Post-Japan - April 13th
- ↳ Reference Materials - President Obama’s Nuclear Stand Post-Japan - April 13th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Religious Freedom And National Security - Mar 16th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Religious Freedom And National Security - Mar 16th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Religious Freedom And National Security - Mar 16th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Religious Freedom And National Security - Mar 16th
- ↳ DO-IT-YOURSELF SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION E-MAIL CAMPAIGN – Feb 9th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Reports By Two Deficit-Reduction Commissions - Feb 9
- ↳ Original Proposal - Reports By Two Deficit-Reduction Commissions - Feb 9
- ↳ Participant Comments - Reports By Two Deficit-Reduction Commissions - Feb 9
- ↳ Reference Materials - Reports By Two Deficit-Reduction Commissions - Feb 9
- ↳ Discussion Outline - Making Our Democracy Work by US Supreme Ct Justice Stephen Breyer - Jan 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Making Our Democracy Work by US Supreme Ct Justice Stephen Breyer - Jan 12th
- ↳ Post-Meeting Participant Comments - Making Our Democracy Work by US Supreme Ct Justice Stephen Breyer - Jan 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Making Our Democracy Work by US Supreme Ct Justice Stephen Breyer - Jan 12th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Making Our Democracy Work by US Supreme Ct Justice Stephen Breyer - Jan 12th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - The US Gov's "Kill List" To Assassinate US Citizens in Yemen - Dec 15th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The US Gov's "Kill List" To Assassinate US Citizens in Yemen - Dec 15th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The US Gov's "Kill List" To Assassinate US Citizens in Yemen - Dec 15th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The US Gov's "Kill List" To Assassinate US Citizens in Yemen - Dec 15th
- ↳ Unofficial Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign - Obama's Wars - Nov. 10th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward - Nov 10th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward - Nov 10th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward - Nov. 10th
- ↳ Discussion Outline -- Murder City – What Does Juarez say about our future? -- Oct 13th
- ↳ Original Proposal - MurderCity - What does Juarez say about our future? - Oct 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments - MurderCity: What does Juarez say about our future? - Oct 13th
- ↳ Reference Materials - MurderCity: What does Juarez say about our future? - Oct 13th
- ↳ Discussion Outline - - The Big Sort: Why The Clustering Of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart - Sep. 15th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Big Sort: Why The Clustering Of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart - Sep. 15th
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Big Sort: Why The Clustering Of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart - Sep. 15th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Big Sort: Why The Clustering Of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart - Sep. 15th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Greg Mortenson's Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan - August 11th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Greg Mortenson's Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan - August 11th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Greg Mortenson's Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan - August 11th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Greg Mortenson's Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, In Afghanistan and Pakistan - August 11th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America And How To Get It Back - July 14th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America And How To Get It Back - July 14th
- ↳ Participant Comments - "The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America And How To Get It Back" - July 14th
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How To Get It Back - July 14th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Arizona's New Immigration Law - June 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Arizona's New Immigration Law - June 9th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Arizona's New Immigration Law - June 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Arizona's New Immigration Law - June 9th
- ↳ Meeting Cancellation - After Iran Gets The Bomb (Foreign Affairs Magazine Lead Article) - May 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - After Iran Gets The Bomb (Foreign Affairs Magazine Lead Article) - May 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - After Iran Gets The Bomb (Foreign Affairs Magazine Lead Article) - May 12th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - "The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism" - April 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - After Iran Gets The Bomb (Foreign Affairs Magazine Lead Article) - May 12th
- ↳ Original Proposal - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - April 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" - April 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - April 14
- ↳ “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” CALL TO ACTION = The Supreme Court’s Recent Corporate-Campaign-Contribution Decision - (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - US Supreme Court 1/21/2010 Decision on Campaign Contributions by Corporations - March 10
- ↳ Original Proposal - U.S. Supreme Court 1/21/2010 Decision on Campaign Contributions by Corporations - March 10
- ↳ Participant Comments - U.S. Supreme Court 1/21/2010 Decision on Campaign Contributions by Corporations - March 10
- ↳ Reference Materials - U.S. Supreme Court 1/21/2010 Decision on Campaign Contributions by Corporations - March 10
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - When China Rules The World - Feb 10th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Martin Jacques' "When China Rules The World" - Feb. 10th
- ↳ Reference Mats + Participant Comments - When China Rules the World - Feb 10th -- including Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz and the NY Times Book Review on "When China Rules The World"
- ↳ “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” CALL TO ACTION = The ONLY Way To Transform The Prevailing SINGLE-DIGIT Inner-City High School Graduation Rates to 65%-70% And Beyond - (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Oprah Winfrey's "Precious" - Jan. 13th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Continuing Our Oprah Tradition With "Precious" – Jan 13th
- ↳ Participant Comments and Reference Materials - Continuing Our Oprah Tradition With “Precious” – Jan 13th
- ↳ “SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION” CALL TO ACTION = Eliminating Unemployment With A “National Security Work Force” (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
- ↳ Original Proposal - Dorothy Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer-Prize Winning "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" - Dec. 9
- ↳ Participant Comments and Reference Materials - Dorothy Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer-Prize Winning "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" - Dec. 9
- ↳ "SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION" CALL TO ACTION - General Motors & the EPA Perpetrating Fraud Re the Chevrolet Volt (ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE)
- ↳ Original Proposal - General Motors + the EPA Perpetrating Fraud Re the Chevrolet Volt - Nov 18
- ↳ Participant Comments - General Motors and the EPA Perpetrating Fraud Re the Chevrolet Volt - Nov 18
- ↳ Reference Materials – General Motors and the EPA Perpetrating Fraud Re the Chevrolet Volt – Nov 18
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - "American Policy Toward Palestinians = The Key to Middle-East Peace" - ONLY 5 MINUTES NEEDED TO PARTICIPATE
- ↳ Original Proposal - American Policy Toward Israel - Oct 14th
- ↳ Participant Comments - American Policy Toward Israel - Oct 14th
- ↳ Reference Materials - American Policy Toward Israel - Oct 14th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Health Care/Insurance Reform - Sep. 9th
- ↳ Bill Lee's Original Proposal - Health-Care (or Health-Insurance) Reform - Sep 9th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Health-Care (Health-Insurance) Reform - Sep 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Health-Care (Health-Insurance) Reform - Sep 9th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Three Cups of Tea - August 12th
- ↳ Participant Comments - "Three Cups of Tea" - Aug. 12th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - How to Change The World - July 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal - How To Change The World - July 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments - How To Change The World - July 8th
- ↳ Original Proposal - Come Home America - June 10
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Come Home America - June 10
- ↳ Reference Materials - How To Change The World - July 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments - Come Home America - June 10
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - The ONLY Way To Transform SINGLE-DIGIT Inner-City High School Graduation Rates to 65%-70% - Only 5 Minutes Needed to Answer the Call to Action
- ↳ The Banking Imbroglio - Come Home America - June 10
- ↳ Reference Materials - Come Home America - June 10
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - A Report Card for U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan - May 13
- ↳ Original Proposal - A Report Card for US Education Secretary Arne Duncan - May 13
- ↳ Participant Comments - A Report Card for US Education Secretary Arne Duncan - May 13
- ↳ Reference Materials - A Report Card for US Education Secretary Arne Duncan - May 13
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION – Human Intelligence vs. Surging in Afghanistan From 17,000 U.S. Troops to 70,000 and Beyond
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Afghanistan, President Obama's Vietnam and Pakistan, His Cambodia - April 8
- ↳ Original Proposal - Afghanistan, Pres. Obama's Vietnam and Pakistan, His Cambodia - April 8
- ↳ Participant Comments - Afghanistan, Pres. Obama's Vietnam and Pakistan, His Cambodia - April 8
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - How Should Pres. Obama Reform Health Care - March 11
- ↳ Reference Materials - Afghanistan, Pres. Obama's Vietnam and Pakistan, His Cambodia - April 8
- ↳ Original Proposal - How Should Pres. Obama Reform Health Care - March 11
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Saving the Democratic Party from Extinction: Foreign Policy - Feb. 11
- ↳ Participant Comments - How Should Pres. Obama Reform Health Care - March 11
- ↳ Feb. 11 Topic = Saving the Democratic Party from Extinction - Foreign Policy
- ↳ Report of the 2007 Democratic Congress' Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism - Feb. 11
- ↳ Participant Comments - Saving the Democratic Party from Extinction/Foreign Policy - Feb. 11
- ↳ Other Background Mats - Saving the Democratic Party from Extinction/Foreign Policy - Feb. 11
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Leaving Children Behind - Jan. 14
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - Separate BUT UNEQUAL Public Schools
- ↳ January 14th Topic = Leaving Children Behind
- ↳ Background Mats + Participant Comments - Leaving Children Behind - Jan. 14
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - "It's The Economy, Stupid" - Dec. 10th
- ↳ Text - 2007 Supreme Court Reversal of School Integration - Leaving Children Behind - Jan. 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - "It's The Economy, Stupid" - Dec. 10th
- ↳ December 10th Meeting = "It's The Economy, Stupid"
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Al Gore's Challenge to America - Nov. 12
- ↳ Reference Materials - "It's The Economy, Stupid" - Dec. 10th
- ↳ CALL TO ACTION - Al Gore's 10-Year Challenge to America
- ↳ Participant Comments - Al Gore's Challenge to America - for Nov. 12
- ↳ Additional Ref Materials - Al Gore's Challenge to America - for Nov. 12
- ↳ Text of Al Gore's July 17th Challenge To Re-Power America's Electricity Grid Within 10 Years - For Nov. 12
- ↳ To Go "Beyond The Call of Duty" - Info About Three Background Books - For Nov. 12
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Team of Rivals - Oct. 8
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Barack Obama's Bible - Sep 10
- ↳ Participant Comments - "Team of Rivals - Oct 8
- ↳ Participant Comments - "Barack Obama's Bible = Rules for Radicals" - Sep 10
- ↳ Ref Mats - "Barack Obama's Bible = Rules for Radicals" - Sep 10
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Aug 13
- ↳ Comments of Participants - Obama From Promise to Power - Aug 13
- ↳ Reference Mats - Obama From Promise to Power - Aug 13
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Everything About Oil - July 9th
- ↳ Comments of Participants - Everything About Oil - July 9th
- ↳ Reference Materials - Everything About Oil - July 9th
- ↳ Tim Russert Eulogies
- ↳ A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System by T.R. Reid – Oct 4
- ↳ Reference Materials – Revisiting The Issue Of Charter Schools: Stanford University vs. Stanford’s Hoover Institution – Oct 13
- ↳ Original Proposal - Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans by Peter Schweizer - April 17
- ↳ July Meeting - Possible Topics (historical)
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - "Infidel" - June 11
- ↳ “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali – for June 11
- ↳ Comments of Participants - "Infidel" - June 11th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Bush's Law - May 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - "Infidel" - June 11th
- ↳ Eric Lichtblau's “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice” – May 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - "Bush's Law" - May 14
- ↳ Reference Materials - "Bush's Law" - May 14
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Apr 9th
- ↳ Clone Rights: Involuntary Soldiers, Sex Slaves, Human "Lab Rats" Etc. - Apr 9
- ↳ Participant Comments/Ref Mats - Clone Rights for Apr 9
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Mar 13
- ↳ Critiques of Benezir Bhutto’s “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West” - Mar 13th
- ↳ Benazir Bhutto's "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West" - for Mar. 13
- ↳ Comments of Participants - Mar. 13
- ↳ Background Materials - Mar. 13
- ↳ DRINKing Liberally Presentation - Fri Eve Feb 29
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Feb 14th
- ↳ Proposed Solution to The Cesspool that is Washington DC - for Feb 14
- ↳ "The Best Gov Money Can Buy: Bribery and Extortion" - Text of Original Proposal for Feb 14
- ↳ Participant Comments - The Best Gov Money Can Buy: Bribery & Extortion - Feb 14th
- ↳ Illegal “Bribe” vs. “Legal” Campaign Contribution - Feb 14th
- ↳ Background Mats - The Best Gov Money Can Buy: Bribery & Extortion - Feb 14th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Jan 10th
- ↳ Illegal Immigration = Topic for Jan 10th
- ↳ Participant Comments on Immigration - Jan 10th
- ↳ Leading Dem Candidates on Immigration - Jan 10
- ↳ Leading Rep Candidates on Immigration - Jan 10
- ↳ Reference Materials - Immigration - Jan 10
- ↳ Call to Action - Meeting Report for Dec 13th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Dec 13th
- ↳ Hillary's Bashing Bush as "Soft on Iran" - for Dec 13
- ↳ Is War With Iran Inevitable??? - Topic for Dec 13
- ↳ Action v. Deterrance (+ Detente) - for Dec 13
- ↳ Bombing Syria 9/6/2007 Re Iran & N Korea - for Dec 13
- ↳ Participant Comments Re War With Iran - for Dec 13
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Nov 8th
- ↳ Ref Mats - Osama's Fatwa To Nuke 10 Million Americans - Dec 13
- ↳ The Controversy That Is Bill Cosby for Nov 8th
- ↳ The KKK - "All The Best People In Society Belonged" - for Nov. 8th
- ↳ Participant Comments - School Integration & The Jena Six - for Nov 8th
- ↳ Background Mats - School Integration & The Jena Six - for Nov 8th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Oct 11th
- ↳ Participant Comments Re Global Warming for Oct 11th
- ↳ Suggested Background Materials Re Global Warming for Oct 11th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Sep 6th
- ↳ Suggested Discussion Outline - Aug 2d
- ↳ Comments of Participants - Universal Health Care for Aug 2nd
- ↳ Suggested Background Materials on Universal Health Care for Aug. 2d
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