A Year After Charlottesville, White Nationalist Views Creep into Politics.

When activists on the left exult about electing members of discriminated-against groups (typically women, Muslims, Latins, blacks, indigenous Americans), or call on the public to support a candidate for that reason, I am concerned lest this encourage whites to campaign to elect people because they are white. The more we legitimize that sort of reason, the more we clear the pathway of white nationalism. To defeat that, we must reject the idea of choosing candidates based on race.

I choose candidates to support because of what they stand for, not their origins.

As for the candidate's religion, I consider that as such unimportant except to the extent it is reflected in the candidate's position.

The more a candidate makes a fuss about religion, the more I worry that per views come from a church. Most churches hold some right-wing views that I would not want in a public official.

U.S. Is Complicit in Child Slaughter in Yemen.

People dispute how best to protect a beach in Belgium from the early stages of global heating, but it only postpones the problem.

It also distracts people from the much bigger dangers that we will encounter if we don't curb global heating.

Business interests argue against a regulation requiring restaurants to list the allergens in each food product.

Usually the problems they cite are real, but exaggerated.

Every regulation that is implemented locally carries a risk of inducing businesses to move elsewhere. However, this is often much smaller than businesses claim. In some cases, we can and should avoid that problem by adopting the regulation for a broader region. But if the only possibility is to apply it locally, that may still be better than nothing.

Small exceptions can make a regulation much easier to obey. It would make sense to exempt specials that are offered for less than a week. I hope the regulation permits a restaurant to address the cross-contamination issue by saying, "this dish contains shrimp and may have traces of fish".

Many US cities punish people for being frequent victims of crime. In general, this potentiates other forms of inequality, so the punishment typically affects poor people and members of suffering ethnic groups.