From the category archives:
As delighted as I was to see the humanities heralded on the front page of the The New York Times August 26 Continuing Education section–I actually direct a humanities based continuing ed program at the University of Scranton– I rue the tone of surrender about the humanities for the young. My life would have been profoundly impoverished had [...]
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Hope is in the air in Rwanda and Kenya. It has reared its beautiful head in each of these nations in the form of a constitutional referendum in Kenya and a presidential election in Rwanda. What made these events dramatically different is that in both cases they were peaceful expressions of people’s hopes and dreams, [...]
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I saw two of the summer’s hottest hits last week and while each has its special “charms,” they have something strikingly in common. They have a post-modern and, perhaps more to the point, post-moral character
The films, “Inception” and “Salt,” were without question skillfully done, each with effects to die for. Death, indeed murder, was as [...]
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Sondra’s newsletter, The National Conversation on Prosperity and the Public Good, for Summer 2010 is now available.
Download it Here
*Newsletter is a PDF
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On Friday, May 21, Sr. Adrian Barrett, a model of compassion and empathy, received the Others Award from the Salvation Army at its gala 125th anniversary celebration. I read of the award in a May 2 article in the Times-Tribune and was struck by its name and its origin. “Others” was the one-word Christmas [...]
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Editor: The pre-election blame game is on. My only hope is that people of all parties or no party will understand it for what is.
Do Americans really believe that the failed terror attempt on Times Square was Obama’s fault? That the oil spill was his fault as well? Then we have the blame they attribute [...]
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In a memorable ancient history college course we examined the rise and fall of various ancient civilizations. It became clear that there were commonalities among them – patterns of growth and symptoms of decline. One notable symptom of decline was that words lost their meaning; meanings get corrupted and reversed in the waning of civilizations.
In [...]
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Do we know how corrosive the culture of corruption is? Call it a global virus or a weapon of mass destruction; call it a cancer. It’s that bad. To be sure it is an enemy of democracy. When it infests the institutions that we rely on for the very core of our national existence – [...]
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When the Evan Bayhs feel that they must leave the political arena in despair, we must stop and think why and begin the difficult process of repair. We Americans have been defined by our sacred democratic rule of law, which gave us the tools – the will and the skills to improve our society. It [...]
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Thank you to Edgar Gorke for his thoughtful Jan. 6 response to my Jan. 3 letter. He might be interested to know that I am neither an advocate of socialism nor an ideologue of any other political or economic philosophy. I do believe that the Founders believed in our inalienable rights to life, liberty and [...]
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