America poses a great and constant challenge to its citizens. We were born out of a set of ideals - ideals which can never be perfectly realized. In a sense, this is the engine of our greatness as a nation ...
Troy Davis was executed on the evening of September 21st, 2011. He was probably innocent, the victim of a judicial and bureaucratic system that seems incapable of halting the slow but inexorable machinery of death once the switch has been thrown and the process has been set in motion ...
What is this authoritarianism that reacts to the mildest threat – actually not even a threat, simply a refusal to comply – with overwhelming force? And what is it with these authoritarian types who possess all the power, who control all the means of force, and yet feel themselves perennially threatened? ...
A zenmaster once observed that in this world there are three categories of knowledge: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns ...
Right-wing conservatives view Democrats and liberals generally as enemies, not rivals. If you want to understand our apparently crazy politics today, it's critical to recognize this...
"Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation"...
If your primary political concern is the national debt, then you probably aren't primarily concerned with facts and realities ...
Revolt against indignity is the founding spirit of our nation. Anyone who can't sympathize with the rage and sorrow in Ferguson is overlooking what it means to be an American...
Politics is not - or shouldn't be - a game, or a blood sport; it is a means of developing, arguing for, and ultimately implementing a governing agenda ...
A little more than eight years ago, as I looked forward to the election of Barack Obama, I had no idea that our polity still had such a long way to go along the road to rock bottom...
Donald Trump’s ego is a black hole - a gaping maw of inconsolable need that cannot be fulfilled. Ever. That is an existential fact of who and what he is. He will try to consume the world. And if he can’t consume it, then he will destroy it in the attempt ...
Human beings are peaceable; they find it hard to fathom that the bully enjoys his aggression for its own sake, and that he is not going to stop for the simple reason that his objective is not to obtain some particular goal but, rather, to dominate...
Our society has been changing at an increasingly rapid rate during the post-WW2 era. For many people (including me), it hasn't moved rapidly enough. But for many others, it's all been too much, too fast...
In a perfect world, we'd all be civil to one another, never embarrass or condescend to one another. But this is not a perfect world... Calls for civility are often used by defenders of the status quo to avoid a serious debate that they would prefer not to have...