Abortion is often in the news, but it has reappeared again lately in three guises: the controversy around Planned Parenthood and the supposed sale of fetal tissue, the violent attacks and murders in a Colorado Planned Parenthood facility by an anti-abortion radical, and the comments by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump that women who have […]
Present
Blog posts relating to the present such as social justice issues
The Ethical Imperative for Making America Better: Learn from our Peer Nations
For physicians, the Hippocratic Oath forms the ethical basis of their practice. Our leaders in Congress take a solemn vow to defend the Constitution of the United States. Law enforcement officials make promises to “serve and protect.” Whether these promises are actually kept or not, the people making them are, in effect, undertaking an ethical imperative […]
Capital Punishment from the Perspective of the “Other Side”
The United States is one of the few Western industrialized nations that still allows the death penalty. Americans who favor capital punishment justify it for several reasons: someone who commits a heinous crime deserves to die; the death penalty is a deterrent to violent crime; and death is the only punishment that comes close […]
Good Government versus Bad Government: Don’t Throw the Baby out with the Bath Water
We Americans have a long history of ambivalence toward government at all levels. We have recently witnessed the stand-off in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon between authorities and anti-government protesters. Republican presidential candidates cry out for abolition of government agencies – and have been doing so for decades (recall Ronald Reagan’s frequent rallying […]
Fear, The Enneagram and Political Decision-Making
Danger and threats (perceived or real) are all around us – terrorists, violence, illegal immigrants, out-of-control cops, a volatile stock market, wild weather … It is understandable that we react to these threats with fear. As individuals and communities, we want and need to reduce these threats as much as possible. We are always seeking […]
Reincarnation and Genetics: A Novel Approach to Facing Racism
Paranormal evidence points to the fact of reincarnation. Near-death experiences, reputable psychics and mediums, the seer Edgar Cayce, out-of-body experiences, electronic voice phenomena, past life regressions in psychotherapy, and instrumental transcommunication together combine to show that most human beings have lived multiple lives on earth – some estimates suggest in the neighborhood of 85-100. Given […]
Paul’s Female Colleagues: Not Keeping Silence in the Churches
Sixteen years into the 21st century – despite the reality of women in the workplace, women in leadership positions in business and government, and the ordination of women in many Protestant denominations and in Judaism – we can still find preachers railing against the leadership of women in Christian organizations. (We will concentrate here on […]
The American Workplace 6: Summary and Suggestions
We need to be honest about the state of workers and the workplace in the United States of America: in many cases, the situation for millions of individuals and families is demoralizing, unhealthy, detrimental to the social fabric, and sometimes downright dangerous. We have seen in this series how US workers have virtually no job […]
The American Workplace 5: Wages, Savings and Debt
How is your dollar doing? A look at some statistics about wages, savings and debt in the US is instructive. If you are not doing terribly well financially, you are not alone – and there are ways out of our collective problems, if we are willing to look seriously at ideas from other nations and […]
The American Workplace 4: Work and Overwork
Work – overwork – the dignity of work. In this fourth installment of my series on the American workplace, I want to challenge the pervasive American notion that working excessively is a virtue and that not working practically around the clock means that one is a “slacker.” I also want to put the issue into […]