Two recent articles, 1) Can Dual Citizens Be Good Americans? and 2) Whites Account for Under Half of Births in United States, illustrate both how far we’ve come as a mature, liberal democracy, and how we still have a long way to go. (We’re not there yet because we’re still writing articles like these.) The [...]
Archive for the ‘Idle Thoughts’ category
Dual citizenship, non-white births on the rise, haven’t we more important things to write about?
May 17, 2012Malik says, Oh envoy of Allah, I am not one of those who looked the other way.
May 15, 2012Getty Images Salafist supporters pray during the counter-protest against a demonstration by Pro NRW in Cologne on May 8. “A debate about violent Salafists has erupted in Germany after radical Muslims clashed with supporters of the anti-Islamic Pro NRW party during its recent election campaign. Three young Muslims who took part in a demonstration against [...]
Where the Wild Things Are. Maurice Sendak, June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012
May 11, 2012Where would you rather be? With the Salafists at Friday prayers in Yemen? With President Vladimir V. Putin and Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev watching a Victory Day parade in Moscow on Wednesday, May 9th? Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Or with Max in his wolf suit in “Where the Wild Things Are”?
An Exceptional Land and People, the United States?
May 8, 2012If we were to take the “well-being” temperature of the world, where would it fall, what would be the reading? Of Europe nothing positive is being said. In fact, the “well-being” is not there. Mostly there is talk of a break-up of the European Community of some 27 nations, perhaps preceded by an abandonment of [...]
Dan Hurley, What Your I.Q. Means
April 19, 2012I take the list below, “What your I.Q. means,” from an article by Dan Hurley in the NYTimes. Now, I’ve often heard that I.Q. is not important, or that at least we shouldn’t make too much of it. For we probably don’t, and with good intentions as well as good reasons, want to separate ourselves [...]
When rights to be earned become entitlements to be had we all have a problem
April 16, 2012What happened that Democratic and Republican members of Congress, especially in the House, where republicans now make up a “severely” conservative majority, are battling among themselves over timid budget proposals to reduce next year’s budget deficit, while doing little or nothing about the total federal debt of some $15 trillion? Given the size of both [...]
I wrote this nearly 20 years ago. Do I still believe it? Do you?
March 26, 2012In my journal of 3/9/94 I wrote: Recently in my capacity as a Foundation trustee I’m been approached with several proposals for new schools under the recent Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993. Two of these proposals contained lists of educational goals, the goals of these new schools for successful high school graduation, goals such as: — [...]
An earlier look at unemployment, or joblessness
March 25, 2012I take the following from Harpers Magazine of September of 1993, from an article by Richard J. Barnet, The End of Jobs, Words written nearly twenty years ago, still just as relevant and still just as ignored. In the end, the job crisis raises the most fundamental question of human existence: What are we doing [...]
Would the public schools be best characterized as being robust, resilient, or vulnerable?
March 24, 2012Sander van der Leeuw during a Slate Magazine interview is asked: So what is resilience, exactly? He has this to say, among other things, in reply: “Any system, whether it’s the financial system, the environmental system, or something else, is always subject to all kinds of pressures. If it can withstand those pressures without really changing [...]
Why has President Obama ruled out containment?
March 22, 2012I agree with Roger Cohen when he says in a Times op-ed piece, The False Iran Debate, that it is not now and will never be in Israel’s interest to attack Iran unilaterally, and that the Jeffrey Goldberg led false Iran debate in the Atlantic is only wind, or as Cohen says, “huge gusts of [...]
