“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet!” writes Rudyard Kipling in “The Ballad of East and West.” That seems an apt description of the politics in the Philippines. On one side, we have the government and its “diehard” supporters, and on the other,…
Comments closedAuthor: Emmanuel Alfonso, SJ
Can a Christian support the government’s war on drugs that has already claimed thousands of lives? If the surveys are to be believed, the majority of this predominantly Christian nation has spoken. Despite the Fifth Commandment, which they have memorized since childhood, and the often-heard Church’s teaching that killing is…
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“Duck, cover, and hold.” We are now familiar with this stratagem, thanks to the regular drills of the Metro Manila Development Authority. This concrete and practical tip may spell the difference when our lives are on the line. But what do we do when tyranny threatens to snuff out the…
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The piecemeal erosion of democracy
In their recent book, “How Democracies Die,” Harvard University professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write about how democracies deteriorate into authoritarianism. Although their concern in the book is how US democracy is now imploding, the authors share decades of research on democracies worldwide. Ziblatt is an expert in European…