If any of these answers comes as a surprise, it is because Americans have increasingly substituted labels for analysis. Turn on talk radio, or one of the numerous television shows where political pundits scream at each other and you will hear terms like liberal or right-wing used to dismiss a point of view with which the commentator disagrees. What you won’t often hear is a reasoned discussion of the merits or flaws of that point of view.
Continue reading “Words, Words, Words”
Author Archives: Sheila
Protecting the Idea We Hate
A friend of mine once summed up the purpose of Bill of Rights by analogy; as he put it, "Poison gas is a great weapon until the wind changes." The best reason for refusing to allow government to suppress bad ideas is that tomorrow, government may use that authority to suppress good ones. Our legal and economic systems are based upon our belief in the marketplace–if I make a better widget, it will beat out the competition; if I have a better idea, it will eventually emerge victorious.
Continue reading “Protecting the Idea We Hate”
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Brother Junipers restaurant–a longtime fixture on Massachusetts Avenue–has closed its doors. For many of us, it was a devastating loss.
Continue reading “Where Everybody Knows Your Name”
Merry (Secular) Christmas
In the early 1990s, Benjamin Barber wrote a prescient book, entitled "Jihad vs. McWorld." In it, he predicted that the defining conflict of the twenty-first century would be between globalization and tribalism; between commercial, capitalistic interdependence and insular, isolationist communities that view global capitalism and its accompanying secularism as overwhelming threats to their cultural and religious beliefs. What Barber failed to note was that this same conflict is taking place within the United States. How else do we understand Judge Roy Moore’s efforts to post the Ten Commandments, the continual attempts to make public school students pray, or the yearly calls for government-sponsored creches at Christmas?
Continue reading “Merry (Secular) Christmas”
Lessons Unlearned
America’s attention is focused on Iraq these days, so the Bush Administration’s recent announcement that it plans to privatize 800,000 federal jobs, beginning with air traffic controllers, got very little attention.
Continue reading “Lessons Unlearned”