Welcome to my minimalist homepage.

For my inaugural installment of Dave’ Deconstructions, a little segment in which I deconstruct concepts that strike me as relevant and/or fascinating, I’ll turn to the inaugural address for inspiration. In his inaugural address, President Biden set “unity” as the theme of the day. Since then, the concept of “unity”…

Truth is Real (Or: I Want To Believe That the Truth is Out There.) We know in our heart of hearts that facts are facts and truth still matters. Yet we feel like we’re living in a post-fact world. Which is it? Can it be both? It’s tough to reconcile…

Partisanship has reached historically contentious levels. It’s natural to react with calls for more bipartisanship. However, I feel that bipartisanship is a half measure where a full measure is needed. Bipartisanship is beneficial in the sense that it challenges us to consider both sides of each issue with fair judgment…

Politics and philosophy have always been closely related. Going back to the origins of Greek philosophy, the first major (by major I mean really long, not necessarily the most important) work of Plato was called The Republic and spent hundreds of pages talking about organizing city states without coming to…

When I first immersed myself in the study of philosophy as a teenager, I believed that philosophy should be used only for good, to oppose bad things like injustice and tyranny. I quickly learned that the biggest challenge of philosophy was in using it for anything at all. Twenty years…

The 2016 presidential election created a deep sense of despair among Democrats, liberals, and progressives. There was a sense that we were not doing enough, a sense that we had gone wrong. …

I’ll be frank: philosophy doesn’t do itself many favors. It’s too old, too Western and too esoteric. When I studied philosophy in college, I delighted in learning big words and making them sound even bigger. I liked making everything an argument, arguing about nothing, and then doing nothing about everything…

Guidelines for Civil Discourse Civil discourse may seem hard to come by online these days, but I have managed to find some success with it. After much trial and error, I have found these six guidelines to be the most effective: 1. No pejoratives of any kind 2. Avoid rhetorical questions 3. Avoid the…

I am fascinated by civics and politics, so I give a lot of thought to my political identity. I tend to vote democrat and think liberal, but I identify primarily as progressive. To some these terms may equivocal (they are all “left wing”) but to me the nuances and differences…