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Making God Smile
- Culture, Featured, Religion, Uncategorized
- May 16, 2025
Most of us learned—or should have learned—in school that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. Therefore, we do not have direct rule by the demos, the “mob” of common people, but by elected representatives and leaders. Of course, some cynically deny that our nominal governments actually rule. Our “real” rulers, they usually
READ MORE“Parents should not make empty threats to their kids.” You would be hard pressed to find anyone who will disagree with that statement. Parenting philosophies across the spectrum agree that empty threats are a bad idea. Given that consensus, it’s astonishing how often parents resort to empty threats. In fact, they are probably the most
READ MORENovember 9th marks the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, in Germany. Earlier that month in 1938, a young Jew of Polish descent, Herschel Grynszpan, having learned of his family’s forced expulsion from their home in Hanover, Germany, bought a revolver, entered the German embassy in Paris, and killed Ernst Van Roth,
READ MOREI scanned my sample ballot. The options were less than inspiring. “Surely,” I thought, “there is a better way than this.” Fortunately, there is. Voting isn’t the only way to effect social change—indeed, it isn’t necessarily a very good one given what we know about voter irrationality and the like. Here are three complements to
READ MOREIn the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Mara Keisling, head of the National Center for Transgender Equality, anticipated his hostility. She declared that trans people would fight for their rights – and that “Over the last two decades, we have made faster progress than any movement in American history”. That’s probably right. Faster
READ MORENov. 18 will mark 40 years since nearly 1,000 Americans—a majority of them African American—perished in a mass suicide/murder in the Jonestown compound in the jungles of Guyana. Many misconceptions surround this horror, but a new account dispels some common myths. Cult leader Jim Jones is often portrayed as having been a normal fundamentalist Christian
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