When one side proposes solution after solution to contain gun violence—and offers compromise after compromise to get something done —while the other side blocks action every time, you know which side is right. When one side brushes aside the dangers of racist and white nationalist terrorism while the other side[Read More…]

The media love conflict, and the current fights among Democrats —in the House of Representatives and on the presidential campaign trail—are irresistible for us journalists. And so many of Trump’s outrages are treated not as the moral disgraces they are but as campaign strategy. As in: Boy, all that cruelty[Read More…]

Do you build the economy from the top down or from the bottom up? And is the main purpose of the economy the production of things or the enhancement of life? I can imagine immediate objections to both questions. Don’t all successful economies involve bottom-up and top-down elements? Doesn’t everybody[Read More…]

The burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, a monument to human creativity and divine inspiration, invites first a mournful silence and then a search for meaning. This often involves efforts to understand the inexplicable by reference to metaphor. That this ancient place of worship burned during Holy Week invites, perhaps paradoxically,[Read More…]

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned that President Trump would declare a national emergency to shift around money to finance his border wall, her denunciation was predictable. But her way of expressing outrage was not. The issue she used to make her point was important on many levels. Observing the[Read More…]