Harper’s Magazine has invited America to a season of national self-examination. The cultural struggles we are going through now are signs of progress. They are necessary if we are to continue to grow toward justice. But such changes are not supported by bumper sticker philosophies. They are nuanced and complex, and the following letter is…
With the death toll surpassing 120,000, we account for the most COVID-19 deaths in the world. American police kill over 1,000 people every year. We’re the only one out of 22 advanced nations that doesn’t give all workers some form of paid sick leave. We’re the only industrialized nation without guaranteed, universal…
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is sometimes heralded as “the ‘Magna Carta’ of the internet.” It was passed in 1996 to provide websites with incentive to delete pornography, but it has since evolved. It is now effectively a shield that websites use to protect them from responsibility for all sorts of activity on…
Writing is something you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done – so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well. Ernest Hemingway
Matt Egan, writing for CNN Business, noted today that even though the past three months have been financially painful for many Americans – it hasn’t been for billionaires. US billionaires have become $565 billion richer since March 18, according to a report published Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. Total…
Washington Post columnist George Will, ever the staunch conservative, wrote a column in yesterday’s paper titled Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers. This column was extraordinary in several ways. It represented yet another revolt among a growing number of influential members of the President’s own party. It has garnered the most comments…
A stunning story in Wall Street Journal on May 26, 2020 reported that an internal study by Facebook’s own researchers in 2018 revealed that the social media company’s algorithms not only did not bring people together, but in fact were driving people apart. “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a…
“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.” — Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823
“Police officers don’t face justice more often for a variety of reasons — from powerful police unions to the blue wall of silence to cowardly prosecutors to reluctant juries. But it is the Supreme Court that has enabled a culture of violence and abuse by eviscerating a vital civil rights law to provide police officers…
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” The White Queen to Alice, Alice in Wonderland