February 14, 2017

Selective outrage, selective memory

In 1938, the Evian Conference was held in France, presupposing that the 38 nations in attendance would accept more Jews from Germany and Austria.  Hitler promoted Jewish emigration, both voluntary and forced, as a "solution" to his Jew...

July 28, 2016

Bill Clinton’s big convention lie

Ego is the alchemist’s dream.  It can recreate a life’s history, edit out flaws and failure, and settle into your memory in a way that can challenge the lie detector’s needle.  Tuesday night, in Bill Clinton’s sorcer...

July 19, 2016

The pernicious idea of white privilege

An elite school in New York City has a diversity program that teaches white children, as young as six, about their inherent racism rooted in inordinate “privilege.”  They are told this stems from their European heritage and is a corr...

July 10, 2016

Racism: Real and Presumed

Most problems benefit from dispassionate analysis. We suffer from premature closure when we jump to conclusions because they fit what we want.  Ironically, sloppy analysis often leads to casual certainty and what we want becomes written in stone...

January 3, 2015

Bill Clinton's Immunity

Amidst all of the attention being given to Hillary Clinton's inevitable presidential run, there awaits a debate that must provoke intense and thoughtful commentary. The prospect of returning Bill Clinton to the White House tests our objectivity a...

July 28, 2014

A Tunnel Too Far

War is either the arm of political strategy or an existential moment.  For modern national states, armed conflict is a late if not last resort.  As a nation, the U.S., and its body politic, have a perspective rooted in its history and ...

April 28, 2013

Kurtz Would Have Loved Them: 'Horror and moral terror are your friends'

When Samuel Huntington wrote The Clash of Civilizations, he presaged the Boston Marathon bombings by the proposition that the cause of future conflict will no longer be economic or territorial; rather, our woes will come from profound difference...

October 24, 2011

The Growth of the Health Sector: Bigger Doesn't Always Mean Smarter

As the jobs data spill into the political pot, job growth in the health sector is portrayed as the pony in the manure pile.  In fact, to the contrary, the projected expansion seeks to embrace but another policy corrosive to the quality of Americ...

September 20, 2011

Why the Health Care System Can't Cure Cancer

When it comes to health care, there is an oft-sung mantra: "We have received little return from the investment of health care dollars!"  Nor, the chorus fervently adds, have we cured cancer or heart disease. One of the most recent singers of thi...

July 8, 2011

When the Doctor Goes Home: The Coming Indifference of American Medicine

It is the close to midnight and your mother is drifting in and out of consciousness.  She is 77, not young but not old enough for fatalism.  In her darkened hospital room you feel fear and the dread of uncertainty.  And then, the docto...