From the category archives:
We may have a right to be angry, but we also have a responsibility – to elect or re-elect people who have the wisdom and character to pull us out of the mess that we’re in. These are not happy times but it is our challenge as citizens to cope with them and resolve to [...]
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We talk about lights at the end of the tunnel, but nothing is more rewarding than a little illumination within the tunnel. On Labor Day, I saw two such lights. I was especially grateful because this is a week laden with memories and reflections. As a Jew, as an American and as a citizen of [...]
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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 [...]
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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 message [...]
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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 [...]
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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. [...]
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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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