Unpacking Ideas

I’ll tell you how to vote on Tuesday.[1] One Of Us Should Decide, And It Should Be Me  We could solve this political mess and save all kinds of money and time, if we assign one person to make the decisions. One person chooses the winner, and tells the rest of us how to vote.  [...]

Ethnic (or moral or cultural) diversity seems to frighten us. We can debate — as we have here — the reasons for this root fear. Regardless of its reason for being, it exists. Our need for sameness gurgles like a belch waiting to be released from the dark under-belly of our collective soul.

My simple conclusion as a Christian was this: The policies that our Church endorses publicly ought to look a bit like the Jesus we read about in the Gospel of Luke (or Matthew, or Mark, or John). The policies we endorse as people of faith ought to protect our widows, care for our orphans, and welcome strangers in our land.

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”   – The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1989 “What matters today is not the difference between those who believe and those who do not believe, but the difference between those who care and those who don’t.”   – Georges [...]

Etzioni and others like him (more and more of them, fortunately) have long been convinced there is hearty middle ground where we can obtain a balance between a commitment to community and the pursuit of self-interest. They believe (me too!) there is hopeful middle ground where you and I can retain our precious personal rights while also remaining diligent in our pursuit of common good.

Perhaps Arizona helps us see what we might become — our dark side. Arizona’s behavior might alert other more reasonable folks to say, “Hey, I don’t want to become like them. I am not that way. We are not that way.”

I think effective immigration reform belongs in the middle. For me as a Christian, immigration reform makes perfect sense. And there’s good news. A middle-way approach to how we respond to our immigration crisis is being embraced by an ever-growing centrist group of religious leaders.

“Women are ultimately the key to development, they are the key to the eradication of poverty.  Once you empower them, you empower a nation.”  — Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate, Peace, 1984  This is a true story.  An omen, perhaps.  When I woke up after an apparently restless sleep I saw that the book had toppled onto my laptop keyboard.  I [...]

The principles of a just war were first articulated by theologian Augustine of Hippo in the 4th C. and later refined by theologian Thomas Aquinas in the 16th C. These principles describe what needs to be true before a nation enters a war (jus ad bellum), and what needs to be true about how the nation does the war (jus in bello).

It’s simple. Let’s say we will protect our children and babies. Let’s say we will feed all of our children enough. Let’s say we will do whatever it takes to keep more of our babies alive. The rest we’ll worry about later.