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Robert de Neufville
Contributor, Big Think
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of Go. You can find me on Twitter at @rdeneufville.
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President Obama said Monday that overturning the Affordable Care Act would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step.” But by all accounts oral argument in the Supreme Court went badly for supporters […]
Mitt Romney will win the nomination. Rick Santorum’s victory in Louisiana only delayed the inevitable. Santorum gained just 5 delegates in Louisiana on Romney, who is still 295 delegates ahead. […]
How would you describe the Republican candidates? A Washington Post/Pew Research poll conducted two weeks ago asked respondents what one word came to mind when they heard the name of […]
After Mitt Romney’s 12-point win in Illinois, it’s difficult to see how anyone else could win the Republican nomination. His lead in the delegate count over Rick Santorum has expanded […]
Rick Santorum had a great day on Tuesday, winning the Republican primaries in both Alabama and Mississippi—a state in which no poll had shown Santorum in the lead. Newt Gingrich, […]
Over the weekend, I looked back at this blog’s most popular posts from 2011. I like to believe they were popular because readers found them interested and recommended them to […]
After more than two years of writing this blog, I still haven’t learned how to predict how people will respond to my writing. The posts I am most proud of—and […]
Mitt Romney is looking more and more like the inevitable Republican nominee. Romney won 6 of the 10 Super Tuesday states, including the crucial state of Ohio. He won the […]
Here’s what we can expect for Super Tuesday. Mitt Romney will win his home state of Massachusetts, the neighboring state of Vermont, and Virginia, where Ron Paul is the only […]
Whatever happens next week on Super Tuesday, the race for the Republican nomination is likely going to go on for a while. By winning the Arizona and the Michigan primaries […]
Nobody seems to really like the U.S. tax system. Conservatives complain that taxes are too high, while liberals say the system isn’t progressive enough. Both may well be right. But, […]
The latest Quinnipiac poll has Rick Santorum ahead of Mitt Romney 35-26 among Republicans and voters who lean Republican. National polls are not by themselves be good indicators of who […]
In an aside to his contribution to our recent discussion of same-sex marriage (my contribution is here), Big Think’s Peter Lawler wrote that Darwinists agree with many religiously observant people […]
In an interview last year,Focus on the Family head Jim Daly seemed toconcede that same-sex marriage would be legal sooner or later. As Iwrote earlier this week, that’s because younger […]
It has been a bad week for Mitt Romney. He did win both the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll and the Maine Caucus over the weekend. But neither of […]
It was a good Valentine’s Day for advocates of same-sex marriage. A week ago, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s ruling that California’s Proposition 8 forbidding […]
On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 2010 district court ruling that California’s Proposition 8 forbidding same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. It was the first time a federal […]
Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney in all three Republican contests on Tuesday. Santorum won by sizable margins in both Missouri and Minnesota—where Romney came in third behind Ron Paul—although Missouri […]
In Florida four years ago about 1.95 million people voted in the Republican primary. This year 1.66 million people voted in the same primary. That’s 300,000 fewer people, a 14% […]
Mitt Romney looks more and more like the Republican nominee after soundly defeating the Republican field in the Florida Primary. Romney managed to get more votes than Newt Gingrich and […]