Other Perspectives

• “Jamie, I view the right to travel (and to settle some place you've traveled to) as inalienable. As far as I'm concerned that trumps all considerations of whether we want immigrants or not.” One reason I love this work is for the thoughts of others that set me on new paths of thinking. That’s why I call the blog “Perspectives.” Imagine an inalienable right to travel and to settle. That would mean a world without gated communities and other places that exclude people for arbitrary reasons. We wouldn’t need passports, and without them, there would be no reason for borders, and therefore no need for nation states, so many of which were arbitrarily carved out in the first place. Without nations, we wouldn't need huge national defense budgets, which would free up trillions of dollars to fund universal health coverage and a dignified old age. With those guaranteed, we would no longer need to treat life as a zero sum game in which we must fight each other over its limited resources. OK, time to wake up and publish.

• “Dear Jamie, I just HAD to share this with you.”

“Is Boston’s finest hour over? All our neighbors who lost life and limb, those who dug deep into themselves and performed heroically without a second thought, those who courageously kept a community safe – has the honor of those moments come down to this: a shabby anti-tug-of-war over the body of the dead bomber? You take him – no, you take him. As if the ground isn’t big enough – hasn’t always been big enough – to hold both saints and sinners.” (http://blog.ellensteinbaum.com)