Utilitarianism

So for class the past two weeks, we've been reading this book (The President of Good and Evil) by Peter Singer. This is the guy who said that morally speaking, humans are no different than animals (to think otherwise is speciesism), and that it is worse to kill an adult than an a baby (babies don't fear death). Compared to that, his take on President W is refreshingly mainstream--Singer doesn't much like the man--although his reasons are considerably different than most peoples'. He thinks that the president is ethically inconsistent and that his moral development is significantly arrested (at the level of a teenage boy, if you're interested).

Anyway, for a Princeton professor (I'm looking at you, Jacob Hacker) his book was pretty lively. A solid read, with an interesting way to look at politics and politicians. Here's an article he wrote for the Times about what you--yes, you--can do to stop world poverty. And here are links to UNICEF and Oxfam America when you need them.

Hilarious Update:
I just found this article about Singer's book about euthanasia that not only references Mein Kampf and Josef Mengele in the same paragraph (gee, I wonder if they got the point across?), but also has a quote from Troy McClure! I was hoping for "Hello, I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such self-help videos as Smoke Yourself Thin and Get Confident, Stupid!" but sadly it was some crap about dying. I miss Phil Hartman.