First of all, Colman McCarthy is funny. Every time he gets on the phone with me, he always asks, “Hey Jim, how are those orange trees doing in your backyard?” Colman is a philosopher: “Warmaking doesn’t stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.” Colman is a passionate pacifist who believes in fighting fire with… water. “Since...

There will always be senseless acts of violence in a free society, but… …when will we develop the social consciousness that says, we will not allow tragedies like Newtown, Connecticut to happen again and again? When will we act like the adults and parents we want our kids to be? When will we demonstrate the fundamental respect for each individual,...

Of all the films whose central character demonstrates a highly developed moral compass, High Noon tops my list. Why does High Noon still matter? Never has one film captured the essence of an ethical dilemma along with the variety of rationalizations against doing the right thing as this 1952 western does. Written by Carl Foreman (who was facing his own dilemma with McCarthyism...

There was a moment, listening to Dennis Haines’s story, that shook me. It began one life-changing night in December, 1968 in Viet Nam as first told by his buddy John Miller. “Our mission was to encircle a village. We called it a cordon. Our squad, moved farther down the road to a point where there was a pathway that led...

You’re sitting in the front row of a sold out conference for self-help guru Tony Robbins, and here it comes, Ba-Bam!: “Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.” According to publisher Simon and Schuster, minister and author Norman Vincent Peale’s best selling book, The Power of Positive Thinking stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for...

Former Texas Representative (D) Jack Brooks died this week. Brooks led Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in his home district of Texas. After Kennedy’s assassination, he was present for the swearing-in of Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One (just behind Jackie Kennedy on the right). Brooks not only helped write Kennedy’s signature Civil Rights Act, he was one of...

Every year the Gallup organization asks a cross-section of Americans to rate “the perceived honesty and ethical standards” of various professions. As expected, nurses, pharmacists and medical doctors have topped the list at 85%, 75% and 70% respectively in 2012. “Six medical professional categories were included in this year’s update,” Gallup writes. “Nurses’ high rating this is not unexpected; they...

By now, most of us are familiar with the story of a New York City cop’s recent act of compassion. After finding a barefoot, homeless man in need of warm socks and shoes on an extremely cold night in Times Square, Police Officer Larry DePrimo walked across the street and bought the best pair of boots he could find with...

Historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin knows presidents. The Pulitzer Prize winning biographer has written on the Kennedys, Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt and her book on Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln was the source material for Steven Spielberg’s latest film. Washington Post writer Lillian Cunningham recently asked Goodwin for her thoughts on presidential leadership. W.P.: “You’ve done several interviews lately about...

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” – Lincoln, April 1864 What stands out in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is how different this man is from everything we think we know about him. He has doubts. He fights with his oldest son as well as his troubled wife. He battles his own cabinet to get what he wants, and he’s willing to...