Anything Obama says or does will be criticized by the radical right, who are masquerading as “conservatives,” though not worthy of the name. It warmed my heart to see him give voice to religious freedom in regard to the mosque center–and he did not “back off” or “qualify” that stance the following day. Whoever can […]
Archive for the ‘Social Issues’ Category
Mosque-ing the Truth
September 9, 2010
Posted in Guns Control, Politics, Race in America, Religion, Social Issues |
Tags: FDR, Guns, JFK, Lincoln, Manhattan mosque center, Obama, Reagan, right wing, the Bushes
3 Comments »
Thank God for Arizona
July 12, 2010Were it not for the benighted legislators of that state we wouldn’t be having a long-overdue national discussion regarding immigration. If such people did not exist, we would have to create them. Before, there was no real “dialogue,” just one-sided, loud declamations by people with no knowledge of immigration history and other, always-present xenophobes who […]
Posted in Politics, Race in America, Social Issues, Uncategorized |
Tags: Arizona law, Bracero program, Immigration, Russell Pearce
4 Comments »
Memorial Day and the Right to Die
May 27, 2010The poet Auden said “existence is believing we know for whom we mourn, and who is grieving.” Memorial Day may mean trips to cemeteries to decorate graves, parades with war veterans marching and orations, honor guards and gun salutes. But times have changed. Wars that ended in victory fade to a more distant past, and […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: Hospice, Jack Kevorkian, Memorial Day, Right to Die
2 Comments »
It Was Never Easy Being Green
May 13, 2010You’d think nature worship went back to the Beginning–whenever that was, and we decry pollution, have national parks and license hunting. And the English and Europeans come here to “get away from it all,” find a more pristine life and fewer people. Doesn’t that all mean something? Well, yes, but things changed along the way, […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: " Chief Standing Bear, Charles Reich and "Greening of America, conservation, Environment, Green movement, John Muir, Native Americans, preservation, Rachel Carson, settlement of America, Sierra Club, Teddy Rooseveldt, Thoreau, William Bradford
3 Comments »
How to Spot a Terrorist
May 6, 2010Well, you can’t, anymore. Not since “Jihad Jane” or, Colleen LaRose of Pennsylvania took up the cudgel of intended violence on behalf of terror. Most of us harbor no love lost for certain people and politics, but we do not recommend bumping them from this mortal coil as part of the remedy. “Jane” was touted […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: domestic terrorism, JIhad Jane
1 Comment »
The Power that Dares Not Speak Its Name
April 23, 2010The past week called to mind the anniversary in 1912 when the world’s greatest metaphor hit an iceberg–and our ax deadline. The latter refers to the power that dares not speak its name: that of government to levy and collect such duty. That of course was before modern so-called conservatism, lacking coherent ideas by which […]
Posted in Politics, Social Issues |
Tags: Fareed Zakaria, rich and poor, Taxation, wealth
2 Comments »
Turkey Lovers, Stuff This
November 28, 2009At the “First Thanksgiving,” white folks were the ones who showed up hungry and got help from others. Have we been as generous to others on our shores? I happen to think that the real miracle of “first Thanksgiving” was that the Indians didn’t take a very dim view of those new, pale-looking folks just […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: American Indians, hunger, white colonization
Leave a Comment »
Washing Our Hands of the Swine Flu
November 13, 2009H1N1, by any other name, is still Swine Flu Times change: besides nothing to fear but fear itself, there is now Swine Flu. It’s also the last thing we want for an epitaph, along with “Fell into an outhouse and drowned.” Use of the more scientific term, “H1N1” is hardly a step up, but might […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: distrust of government, H1N1, Influenze A, Swine Flu
Leave a Comment »
Is “Dead” the “New 75”?
October 3, 2009Older drivers are crashing into everything and everybody while bills flood legislatures and town councils to require regular driving exams and dire threats to loss of license. Our youth-obsessed society forgets that aging is inexorable, regardless of face lifts and botox, and we have boldly regrouped life stages–“50 is the new 35,” and “70 is […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: Aging in America, elderly drivers, teen drivers
Leave a Comment »
Man in the Moon
August 1, 2009THE MAN IN THE MOON The death of Walter Cronkite sent the nation into grieving, and reminded us of all the nation’s crises, and successes, that he walked us through, including the astounding mission to the moon. Just before the moon landing forty years ago, I was among male graduate students who, suffering as they […]
Posted in Social Issues |
Tags: Flat Earth proponents, space and moon exploration, Walter Cronkite
Leave a Comment »
Ichabod's Kin 