Via On Line Opinion comes Phillip Elias's award winning essay A legitimate role for government?

What I believe all this points to is another key aspect of the human person forgotten by the Enlightenment. Martin Heidegger claimed that "we are creatures of the unreal". Unlike animals, we are not defined by our biological need to feed and reproduce. The things that we are most concerned with are those "ought" statements. We are moral beings. We seek a normative dimension to our actions and our lives. Values are an important part of who we are, and any pretensions to "values-neutrality" should be seen merely as the expression of another value.

Where to start? For starters Heidegger never wrote "we are creatures of the unreal", nor anything remotely resembling that, and it is obviously intended to be understood as a literal quote. Nor does Heidegger ever discuss "'ought' statements", nor "normative dimension", nor, in fact, anything in this paragraph.

Congratulations to Mr. Elias for winning the prize. He should look into a career in journalism, especially the main stream media, where with his talents he will fit right in.  ¶ 8:28 AM