Commentaries

The 19th century British philosopher John Stuart Mill is recognized in modern philosophy chiefly for two reasons. He refined the Utilitarian tradition of philosophy established by Jeremy Bentham and he reemphasized the primacy of individual liberty and self-determination against the inroads of the majority in democratic societies. One part of Mill's contribution has been largely overlooked, however. It is his call for legal and social equality for women in an 1861 volume entitled The Subjection of Women. (1)

Imagine a health affliction that ends a career but not a life: a surgeon contracts Parkinson's disease, a NASCAR driver goes blind, a world class sprinter acquires rheumatoid arthritis, or an orchestra conductor goes deaf. My last example is not hypothetical. It happened to Dr. Isaiah Jackson, music director of the Youngstown Symphony from 1996 to 2006. Isaiah, as he likes to be called, came to the Mahoning Valley with impressive credentials:

In 1899 the U.S. Supreme Court issued an important decision on whether government may constitutionally grant public funds to a religious organization. In Bradfield v. Roberts the Court ruled that the District of Columbia could pay a hospital in Washington operated by an order of Catholic nuns to provide a secular service to the poor health care. (1) Under this ruling, many religious groups received public funds without controversy year after year. Typically such groups did not seek to proselytize their clients, only to serve them, and used no religious test in hiring and firing.