The best news in the paper these days is in the Lifestyle section, where, among other revelations, we learn that “swing” is back. Of course, it’s not 1940 all over again, nor is the trend pervasive. College kids around Seattle and around the country are not proposing to outfit a museum called 50 Years On, let alone inhabit it. But Read More ›
The currency shocks across the Pacific have had the perverse result of reminding us that Southeast Asia is still the most promising economic region of the developing world. According to the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, American exports to the region could surpass trade with Japan in the next 20 years. Already, ASEAN’s 450 million people constitute the world’s fourth largest trading Read More ›
The school board in Melvindale had what it thought was a reasonable idea: Let students know there are increasing scientific arguments against the Darwinian dogma of evolution by chance and natural selection (“materialism”). But then they ran up against “the script.” The script is Inherit the Wind, a popular film from 1960 that presented a fictional version of the famous Read More ›
Here is a curious–yet somehow typical–story of Seattle’s civic spirit. Seven years ago, the area’s volunteer and professional arts enthusiasts staged a global, attention-grabbing cultural festival alongside the Goodwill Games of 1990. For several months before, during and after the athletic events, a series of highest quality arts performances and museum shows from many nations dazzled and enchanted audiences. If Read More ›
Cicero wrote that “Not to know what happened before one was born is to remain a child.”But, hey, who was Cicero, anyway? Don’t ask too many college students these days, they probably won’t know. Why would they? Instruction in history is dying out. In the vernacular, “It’s history.” No wonder a Hearst Corporation study showed that 45% of those surveyed Read More ›
MT. RUSHMORE–America is at peace, the world’s superpower and more prosperous than ever. Surely we are too complacent to give proper thanks for our blessings. It will be a rare civic official who makes a 4th of July speech anywhere across the land today, because almost no one wants to hear one, and the politicians are out of practice. Yet, Read More ›
Increasingly, it appears that the United States of America lacks a coherent foreign policy. Yes, there are exceptions. We do have a clear (and bi-partisan) policy on foreign trade, consisting primarily of promotion of free trade agreements and pursuit of violators of those agreements. But what is American policy on preventing nuclear non-proliferation? A recently published Defense Department report on Read More ›
What does an enlightened citizen believe about God at the end of the 20th century? The topic is of growing interest as the millennium approaches and the Baby Boom generation ages. Print and broadcast media have discovered a growing appetite for news about religion in all its manifestations, and they have been feeding and encouraging that appetite. Some deep anxiety Read More ›
A recent press conference held by the NAACP and a group of angry white, female Army personnel at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland was a public relations breaktrhough. It had the intended effect of showing that over-zealous Army brass had pressured the women to make unfounded rape charges against a group of black male soldiers. But it also demonstrated how Read More ›
Okay, in order to ease the strain and allow a civilized consideration of this subject, let’s not get personal here. Anyone who has been divorced, is the child of divorce or has close friends and family members who have divorced — in other words, nearly everyone these days — knows the pain of it. There is a tendency when the Read More ›
His political art appears artless. He is a partisan truly loved by colleagues in the opposition party, as well as in his own. Fellow politicians appreciate his unusual habit of giving credit rather than taking it. In four elected offices over a cumulative 32 years, he remains one of the few candidates who promised a voluntary limit on the terms Read More ›
Pontius Pilate’s cryptic question “What is truth?” is a phrase that launched a thousand sermons, maybe millions, over the intervening centuries. It also haunts any attempt to discuss the volatile questions asked about Christians and other religiously motivated citizens when they take their faith into politics. For the followers of Jesus, he is the “Truth,” which converts an abstract answer Read More ›