Today I’ve been reading about the NFL players and owners meeting discussing proper procedures for the national anthem. I don’t want to get into that specific subject, but as a military veteran, I do have definite thoughts about patriotism. Realizing that this nation has its problems, I believe patriotism includes calling attention to those problems
I’m going to introduce this topic with a teaching story. Several years ago I had a one-day high school job as an intervention specialist. Normally I would help other teachers, but this day I had a dedicated classroom where students could come for help as a kind of supervised study hall. When it was lunch
I grew up during the height of the Cold War, when every home-improvement show we attended had a model bomb shelter. Thankfully, we won that one. But today we may face a threat that is even more insidiously dangerous. I’m sure you’ve heard the accusations that Russia was behind the email hacks during the 2016
Talk about change, President Trump certainly has stirred up a debate about the press’s role in our society. As one might predict, members of the Fourth Estate are very much engaged. In the recent past, I’ve seen the following — The Christian Science Monitor’s March 13, 2017 cover story, “Trump vs. The Media: The War
For longer than I care to remember, we’ve been hearing some very partisan claims on social media about rating presidents. Who was the worst? Most historians have a very strong candidate — James Buchanan, our 15th chief executive (1857-1961), the president just before Abraham Lincoln. In fact, there is a new biography out entitled Worst.
A thought for this inauguration day — Have you ever studied Abraham Lincoln’s pose at the Lincoln Memorial? Specifically, notice his hands. His left hand is a tightly clinched fist, while the right hand is resting relaxed on the chair arm. This suggests there are two equal components of American leadership — strength and compassion.
In the last century or so we’ve focused a great deal on equal opportunity. Sometimes in the conversation we tend to forget women, hence the rise of feminism. Recently I ran across an article that reminded me yet again that equal means just that — equality in all phases of life, only in this instance
This Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Then the real work begins. So what’s it like to be a presidential staff member working in the White House? This week’s Time magazine (cover date Jan 23, 2017) has a twenty-page cover story entitled “Incoming:
Speaking of fake news, how do you counter dangerous speech on social media? The best idea I’ve seen so far has come from Kenya. This country went through a very violent election cycle in 2007 with over 1000 people killed. It seems cellphones were just becoming very popular, and incendiary text messages helped fuel the
What do you need for a successful democracy? One of the most important elements is a free and independent press. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying about power corrupting, so having a watchdog on the beat is essential. I’ve been thinking about this for two reasons. The first is all the discussion about “fake