On July 5th, 1852, 76 years and one day after the American colonies had declared independence, Frederick Douglass delivered a stinging rebuke to all the self-congratulatory speeches on all the flag-draped podiums that had just taken place across the country. In an invited speech in Rochester, N.Y., he asked the members of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”.
Read MoreA century and a half after the Puritans had set foot on what is now Boston, Thomas Jefferson set out to write the Declaration of Independence. The America he saw bore little resemblance to John Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Read More“My dad always flew the American flag.” So begins “Democracy”, the first chapter of The 1619 Project by Nicole Hannah-Jones. “When I was young, that flag outside our home never made sense to me,” she continues. “That my dad felt so much honor in being an American struck me as a marker of his degradation, of his acceptance of our subordination.”
Read MoreThe city on a hill was – and remains – both a real place and a dream. Those who set sail on the Arabella had few illusions about the hardships they would face in Massachusetts. But Winthrop’s sermon gave a special meaning to this new colony in a new world.
Read MoreCritics dismiss the idea of American Exceptionalism as arrogant and dangerous nonsense about a nation whose history is rife with terrible contradictions: the extermination of native peoples in the land of opportunity; the enslavement of a fifth of its population in the cradle of liberty; the denial of the vote to half its people in the citadel of democracy.
Read MoreOne day in the late spring of 1630, on the deck of a three-masted, 350-ton ship somewhere in the North Atlantic, John Winthrop set forth his vision for the community he and his Puritan congregation would build in New England. “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,” he told his 300 fellow passengers toward the end of his long sermon. “The eyes of all people are upon us.” And so, even before the Arbella had anchored off what would become Boston, Massachusetts, and 146 years before independence had been declared, American Exceptionalism was born.
Read MoreAfter a hiatus of several years, I am relaunching my blog, “Perspectives” in a new format. A series of short posts will examine significant issue from a variety of perspectives. Each series will consist of 10-12 posts, each between 500 and 600 words, published twice a week. My hope is to present complex issues in short, easy-to-digest bites.
Read MoreI wrote my first Perspectives (“Haiti”) on January 2, 2012. Initially, the blogs were limited to 250 words and were published five (and sometimes six) times a week. Their intent was to present a modest thought, one that connected my personal world to the much larger world beyond, in the hope of stimulating us (you and me) to think a little differently – to consider something from a new perspective.
Read MoreThe reason I mention this at all is that one of the historical consequences of the Newtonian-Einsteinian gravity conspiracy has been to consign to the dustbin of history the equally important – and now lamentably forgotten – counterforce of levity. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but it certainly has been effective – and I see its impact every morning when I find my inbox filled with messages from candidates, PACs, and untold others in the political business, each one angrier, gloomier, at once more desperate and more negative than the last. To say there is no levity here, no humor, and not a hint of whimsy to start my day would be a huge understatement.
Read MoreIt’s interesting to note that in his farewell address Washington warned about the danger of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party,” which he called “a frightful despotism.”
Read MoreAn unprecedented callousness has crept into our public discourse, and in the land of me first, the other no longer seems to matter. Bullies are not to be confronted but emulated. Lies are not to be exposed but repeated until they have become indistinguishable from the truth. And only a sucker says I’m sorry.
Read MoreI have what may seem kind of a cosmic question: Are we experiencing the contraction of a sense of community, in the broadest meaning of the term, that had been expanding for the last 50 years or more?
Read MoreNot every resident of Montgomery was thrilled about last week’s opening of the lynching memorial and Legacy Museum. “It’s going to cause an uproar and open old wounds,” one told The Guardian. “It keeps putting the emphasis on discrimination and cruelty,” said another.
Read MoreIn Montgomery we confronted our history – or more accurately, our history confronted us with a rawness from which we have shielded ourselves for centuries.
Read MoreMy daughter, Annie, and I just spent two days in Montgomery at the opening of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which covers a small hilltop above Alabama’s capital city. It is an extraordinarily uplifting name for what is, in fact, a heartrending tribute to the more than 4,000 African American victims of lynching in America.
Read MoreThe environmental depredations of Trump, his Secretary of Interior and EPA Administrator should cause every high school graduate in June 2018 to emulate their predecessors of 1970 and turn out voters for Democrats this November.
Read MoreSunday was a big day, at least for me: it was both the 48th Earth Day and my grandson’s third birthday, and I hope Jamie grows up to take good care of both of us.
Read More“I know how much is enough,” a friend of mine once said to me. “It’s just a little more than you have right now.”
Read MoreIt has become increasingly clear that many Americans no longer buy into the American dream.
Read MoreYesterday 24/7 Wall Street published a piece on the “Most (and Least) Healthy Countries in the World.” The rankings are based on an index that measures four variables: “life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, and incidence of tuberculosis.”
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