November 22, 2020

K-12: What's Our 'Stamp Act'? When Will It Be Enough?

You would think we would finally take a stand when it comes to our children. You would think we would be driven by a primal need to protect. But you might think again. There is a blue bubble over the elementary school in an otherwise pleasant semi-ru...

November 3, 2020

Choosing a prom king instead of a president: The power of the politically unconscious

I know a man who has long held generally conservative values but told me the other day that he was voting for Biden because he doesn't like "the way Trump speaks."  He didn't like his oratory skills, his face, or his prese...

November 1, 2020

Not Buying It: Putting an End to the Tyranny of Madison Avenue by Observing the Sabbath

It started with a half-serious, flippant comment in the kitchen. The phone rang loudly, startling me, and I dropped a bowl full of carefully cut vegetables. Frustrated, I blurted out to my husband, “I’ve had enough of ringing and dinging ...

October 11, 2020

Why Communism is Compelled to Destroy Christianity

Most people today see the division in our country as a political one. But, in my mind, that particular divide is a puny pixel in a vast screen. For it is not a mere ideological clash between parties, but a mythic battle between Spiritual Titans....

September 13, 2020

Ten Great Deceptions Designed to Destroy the Republic

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…I was a Madison Avenue copywriter. I was thrilled, until I realized I was a liar for hire. I was assigned an ad for a diet aid. The account executive sent out the marketing strategy. When I read it...

August 22, 2020

Why I Am No Longer a Social Worker

It started one ordinary day, in one otherwise ordinary session: A beautiful young woman I had known for a few years wanted to cut off her breasts. (Details changed to protect identity.) “What happened?” In my mind, the first concern wa...

August 9, 2020

How Therapists Became Gods

In the space of what feels like a breath, we went from the Greatest Generation to the legalization of infanticide, from a country with a singular and evolved moral code to the ripping down of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms across the country, fro...

July 25, 2020

How to Prepare for a Communist Coup

Even as I write the title for this article, I wonder: Is that in fact possible? Can we be prepared for a hostile takeover? The other day I was speaking with a friend about the ongoing insanity in some of our greatest cities: Seattle, Boston, NYC. ...

July 17, 2020

Can a Whole Country Go Mad?

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)   The other day I was watching TV. (We’re quarantined. Sometimes there is little else to do....

July 9, 2020

Economic Cannibalism: What Millennials Don’t Know Will Hurt Everyone

As a conservative social worker, I stand out like a tar pit in a snowstorm. My family leans to the left like a genetic tower of Pisa and I live in a state that is heavily dependent on federal jobs. How this has happened is beyond me, but there it is....

June 28, 2020

Until We Have Faces: The American Niqaab

The other day I was in the garden with a friend, enjoying all the tender blessings of nature when, suddenly, a large vinegaroon crawled past her bare feet. It is a formidable-looking bug, but completely benign to humans. She leapt up like a gazelle o...

June 6, 2019

Can We Just Call It Soldier’s Heart?

Since 1935, when Dupont adopted the slogan “Better Living Through Chemistry,” we have been pummeled by polymers and unduly impressed by the new and shiny. Their advertising not only changed how we thought about the rush of chemicals being...

May 18, 2019

No Regrets

At a dinner party recently two people in their fifties were reminiscing about their good old wild days. As one of them recounted a story too ribald to repeat, the other smiled, sipped a cabernet and sighed, “No regrets. I have no regrets....

May 8, 2019

The Religion of Feeling: A Warning to Conservatives

For a vast percentage of those on the left, all the rhetoric comes down to one basic and very emotional platform: they are the good guys, facts be damned. And despite the tendency of the rational to dismiss it, this is not a platform to be trifl...

February 4, 2017

A conservative social worker! (Is that even possible?)

In an article on the professional culture of social psychologists, Maria Konnakova exposed a lack of political and cultural diversity that was “every bit as dangerous as a lack of, say, racial or religious or gender diversity.” According ...

October 20, 2010

The Great American Trance

A while back, I was talking about Alcoholics Anonymous to someone who'd been mandated to attend a DWI program, and he said with righteous conviction, "I hate A.A. It's all brainwashing." I looked at his Hummer and then at him. "And you...

October 13, 2010

Stimulate This

After more than a year of pontificating, back-patting, and pointing, a steady stream of federal money was released into the American economy as if loosed into irrigation ditches. According to the earlier reports, more than $787 billion in cash was su...

July 18, 2009

There is No Help

In a published commiseration for the tragic death of Michael Jackson in The Hartford Courant,  Peter Tork (the former bass player for the Monkees) summed up the King of Pop's emotional essence in this statement: "I think just about eve...

May 24, 2009

The Survival of the Caretaker

When Marie had to face the reality of her father's Alzheimer's she knew she was also facing a decision she likened to "choosing between jumping off a cliff or getting hit by a bus." "It was terrifying, the idea of relinquishing his car...

May 23, 2009

True Grit: Growing Old in America

I was sitting near a fountain in Old Town and an older man approached the penny-filled catch pond with an expression so earnest I might in other circumstances have easily confused it with reverence. He closed his eyes and held a coin in his fingers l...

May 3, 2008

Be Happy: The American Refusal to Deal with Suffering

God bless America. I mean that with all sincerity. We are a nation of hopefuls and always have been. We march on Washington. We cure diseases that have wracked humanity for eons. We break records and run faster-than-four-minute miles. We split atoms ...

December 31, 2006

It Could Happen Tomorrow: Fear-Based Resolutions for a Happy New Year

I may be one of the only people in the United States who does not indulge in the frenzy of resolution-making between Christmas and New Year's Day. I am not entirely clear whether that makes me either disinterested or impervious, but it is true. I fig...

December 24, 2006

Viral Fear: The Disease of the American Soul

There is a wonderful interpretation of mankind's fall from Eden by Scott Hahn. He asks the question so many of us forget to ask: While Eve was trying to fend off the serpent's temptations, where was Adam? As we know, the story had the serpent, who ...

December 20, 2006

'Tis The Season To Be Fearful: The American Limbic System

Everyone knows that sex sells. It has been a truism for hundreds, more likely thousands of years. The Romans knew it, the Greeks knew it, snake-oil salesmen on the American frontier knew it and we thought we knew it. Instead of talking about the mech...