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Everyone wants to be happy. As Aristotle explains in “The Nicomachean Ethics,” happiness is the thing we desire for its own sake. We don’t pursue happiness as a means to some other good; it appears to be the final end people pursue in life. The other things we aim at – wealth, pleasure, relationships –
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Who is an American? Is it merely someone with a precious blue passport or Social Security card? Is it merely someone who accepts the basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence or thinks the Constitution is neat? It’s true that the Constitution constitutes our nation’s government. It is also true that there is likely no
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I spent the first few years of my life in the West End neighborhood of Birmingham, Ala. My mom would routinely pile us kids into the old Ford, and off we would go downtown, observing very old, very beautiful buildings all over the city. These glimpses of structural beauty were deeply stamped upon me –
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If you are one of those people who will settle in this evening with a hot cup of apple cider to watch a holiday movie, you are not alone. Holiday movies have become firmly embedded in Americans’ winter celebrations. The New York Times reports a massive increase in new holiday movies this year. Disney, Netflix,
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In the movie Bridge of Spies, James Donovan, the lawyer tasked with the legal defense of a Soviet spy during the Cold War, makes the argument to a CIA operative that what makes us Americans is our agreement about the Rule Book, the Constitution. As seen in movie clip above, Donovan states: “Just one thing
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Up until the mid-1960s, America was largely a melting pot of white Europeans. With changes to immigration laws, the last fifty years have seen a large influx of migrants to the U.S. coming from non-European nations. As a nation of immigrants, if race and ethnicity don’t bind us together, what does? In Bridge of Spies,
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