“I have never been considered a part of the religious right, because I don’t believe politics is the most effective way to change the world,” he says now. “Although public service can be a noble profession, and I believe it is our responsibility to vote, I don’t have much faith in government solutions, given the [...]

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When does dissent become Untruth and lose the rights and respect due to “legitimate dissent”? Who decides—and how—what dissent deserves to be heard and what doesn’t? When do journalists have to “protect” readers from Untruth masking itself as dissent or skepticism?
I found myself thinking about this when I came across an unexpected disjunction in the [...]

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In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the sources of that decline. It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years.
Heckman points out that big gaps in educational attainment [...]

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So I’m considering an alternative to the we-are-so-into-our-kids-that-we-do-anything-for-them theory. I call it the Parental Guilt Hypothesis. Why does little Jimmy have baseball camp and rock-climbing lessons and his own personal tutor? Because Jimmy’s mom and dad feel, deep down, guilty for not giving him enough of themselves. Overparenting, in my theory, is frequently an outward [...]

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Unlike the English Whigs and the American Founders, the modern liberal regards suffering not as an unavoidable element of life but as an aberration to be corrected by up-to-date political, economic, and hygienic arrangements. Rather than acknowledge the limitations of our condition, the liberal continually contrives panaceas that will enable us to transcend it.
Barack Obama, [...]

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There are four different skill sets, or competencies, that I’ve found are essential for creative expression. The first and most important competency is “capturing”—preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. Your morning pages, Julia, are a perfect example of a capturing technique. There are many ways to capture [...]

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Our primary ideological export should not be fear; it should be hope. We are at war with people and their belief systems, and ideas cannot be killed by bullets. They can only be killed by better ideas.
Without a coherent strategy, America’s “war on terror” has been tragically inconsistent. We say that our mandate is to [...]

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As such, editorials are a rare voice in our national culture and politics; they are the product of a Socratic enterprise, guided by the idea that debate produces wisdom.
A defense by the LA Times on why papers should keep their editorials. While I do not agree with their specific political leaning, I do appreciate [...]

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The trouble doesn’t lie with Christianity but with power. The two have always been at odds. Political power is a synonym for “physical force,” for bending people to government’s will regardless of their inclinations, interests, or welfare. But Christianity is love – power’s antidote. Anyone who sincerely follows Jesus Christ will never try to compel [...]

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Many years ago my sister visited a friend and took her little Kate with her. During the visit, Kate was on the friend’s lap, and said to my sister’s friend: “You’re the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen.” The friend responded gently: “Yes, Kate, but isn’t it nice that Jesus loves even ugly people?”
When sermons walk [...]

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If there is an innate difference between Yo Yo Ma and a mediocre cellist, or between Tiger Woods and your golfing uncle, it is a willingness to practice, and not an innate aptitude for the cello or the 9 iron. As K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist at Florida State University, wrote in his influential [...]

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When Lombardi took charge in 1997, 37 percent of fourth graders read at grade level, compared with nearly 90 percent today; there have also been double-digit improvements in math scores. By 2002, PS 49 made the state’s list of most improved schools. If you ask Lombardi how it happened, he’ll launch into a well-practiced monologue [...]

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The original 55 mph speed-limit law, enacted in October 1974 after the OPEC oil embargo as a way to save energy, was probably the most despised and universally disobeyed law in America since Prohibition. In wide-open western states, driving at 70 mph or even 80 mph on miles upon miles of straight, flat, uncongested freeways [...]

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Now we know why Barack Obama spent so much time in the gym those last days in Chicago before taking off for Afghanistan. He was practicing jump shots, preparing for the sensational 25 footer he sank in the Kabul gym in front of cheering US troops.
All practitioners prepare. Professionals are defined as much by preparation [...]

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Yes, white kids listen to hip-hop and black boys rock Polo shirts, but race has not yet reached the point of being a non-issue. The elephant is still very much in the room. It certainly was for me when I made a request to ban one boy from simply speaking his mind. N-bomb notwithstanding, I [...]

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