America Great Again?

By |2020-07-13T22:47:35-04:00June 25th, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , |

Make America Great Again? What does that mean? What should it mean? I see the hats, and I see the tee-shirts. I see the eager faces, mostly white, not young -- ‘make America Great Again”, the logos read as the people gather, COVID defiant, at Trump rallies.   I hear Paul Simon’s lines echoing in my head, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?  Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”  There should be tee-shirts that say ‘I want the 1950s back’.  These Trumpers sense that America is in decline,  -- 'the [...]

What Leadership Is

By |2020-08-02T12:48:08-04:00June 1st, 2020|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , |

What Leadership Is From Lincoln to Trump During the height of the Civil War, cemetery construction was, of course, brisk. Some committee members charged with planning and location-finding for these proliferating grave sites approached Lincoln for some advice about a particular site. He said to them, "Put it where I can see it from the windows of my summer home. Thus, will I be reminded what my decisions cost." Can you imagine the Great Denier -- Donald Trump -- acting like the Great Emancipator? Two photographs of [...]

Broken Politics

By |2020-05-02T09:35:59-04:00January 10th, 2014|Categories: Society|Tags: , , , , |

Many Canadians have expressed considerable bewilderment at what is going on in Washington these days. Oh civility, where art thou?  Why do so many members of Congress seem to be breaking bad and letting partisanship trump (oops, was that a pun intended?) 'the better angels of their nature'? Some points seem obvious. The incumbency problem — the ease with which most members of Congress get re-elected reduces their responsiveness to the harassed electorate — like Walter White many members suffer from delusions of infallibility; and unlike Walter, almost never receive reality checks. (This speaks more generally to [...]