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Promises, promises, and promises
Let me tell you a story about a country whose national constitution and its leaders promised each and every citizen free room and board in an apartment complex, a tuition-free education from K-14 and college, and that the government would provide a monthly stipend to the student if they maintained a grade of “C” or…
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Thoughts on Governance
If two-hundred-forty years of so-called American democracy has taught us anything, it is that there are no shortcuts to good governance. If we the people, and those we have empowered to govern us, have not gotten it right after more than a couple of centuries, why should we expect those foreign countries whose dictators and…
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War, Not Peace?
It was Churchill who noted that facts are better than dreams. For we can dream all we want of jobs, or a national health care program, or financial security, or peace, if we do not work for those ends, it just won’t happen. To hope is good, but the word is too subjective. I can…
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Explaining the Inexplicable
When it comes to politics, nationalism, and economics, everyone, it seems, (including me) is seeking to explain “the Donald Trump…”, the “Bernie Sanders…”, “The Brexit … ” phenomena. And, when it comes to enigmas, I am the first to admit I am no Winston Churchill or Alan Turing – and not to offend Polish readers,…
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Yet, again…
Why do these dreams of ours continue to be haunted by our nightmares? Will there ever be a week when we can turn on our TVs or pick up a newspaper without a banner headline announcing yet another senseless mass murder or killing? Must we sacrifice our sense of security or forfeit our way of…
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In the beginning…
Month by month, state by state, seventeen of the United States’ most brilliant political and business icons provided the American electorate a brief history of themselves to convince the voters that they had the solutions to this nation’s ills and were best qualified to lead this country for the next four years. Only time will…
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The Third World War
I have joined many of you in prayer for peace and good will among nations. And, obviously, our prayers have yet to be answered. I have sat at the dinner tables of the Soviet mother who lost all three sons fighting the Nazi invader, and watched my neighbor place the Gold Star in her front-room…
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How Quickly We Forget
During my lifetime the world has witnessed the rise and fall of many sadistic dictators. Topping the list of 20th Century despots are Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Hikedi Tojo, Mao Tse-tung, Francisco Franco, and Ho Chi Minh. It seems, as in the gang drug wars, when one drug lord is executed, another quickly…
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Stranger than fiction
It happened one night… I had watched the 11th Republican Party Debate, wrote a blog post, and then headed for bed. But I couldn’t sleep. The 2012 Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney’s scathing criticism of the current Presidential primary candidate Donald Trump played in a loop in my mind’s ear. In the aftermath of…
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Voting: USA vs. USSR
I was 31-years-old before I could vote in an U.S. Presidential election. The year was 1960, and the major candidates were Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy, and having seen and heard the Vice President in Moscow during the summer of 1959, I came away very impressed with him. Nixon had…