Recent Commentaries

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Speaking of Optimism
“There are no easy answers’,” Ronald Reagan used to say, “but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.” There is moral right and moral righteousness. And there are far too many in Congress who act from the later and not enough of the former who are willing to stand up...
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October 12, 2012
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5 Things Clinton Teaches Us
After the 1998 scandal that rocked his presidency, President Bill Clinton was not one of my favorite people. When Clinton cheated with intern Monica Lewinsky he cheated the rest of the country at a time when things were dramatically improving. When he left office, Clinton left the country with the first federal budget surplus in nearly 30 years. However, with much of...
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October 10, 2012
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?
Jack Welch is “one of America’s all-time great CEOs.” Jack Welch is “one of America’s all-time dumbest former CEOs.” Q: Which statement is true? A: Both. That first quote comes from CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper; the second from me. Last Friday (Oct. 5), the Department of Labor released its monthly unemployment report. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor...
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October 8, 2012
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Moral Imperative
Fifty years ago, I came to Mr. Freeman’s freshman Algebra class struggling to understand little x’s and y’s. The Cuban Missile Crisis came into all of our living rooms at a time when the term “Special Bulletin” meant something more significant than “Breaking News.” For thirteen days, two nations stood on the verge of nuclear war and while I was...
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October 5, 2012
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Integrity Matters
James Burke, the Johnson & Johnson CEO whose leadership during the early 80s Tylenol scare elevated ethics over profit, died last week. In giving a talk to a group in Boston, I emphasized his story as an example in ethical leadership that we need to see more of today. In 1982, when several poisonings had been linked to Tylenolcapsules, Johnson &  » Read more about: Integrity Matters...
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October 3, 2012
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Clint Eastwood: Actor, Director… Ethicist?
Who knew the legendary star of screen and Republican conventions was into the great ethical conundrums of the universe! In the years that Dr. Sara Anson Vaux taught religion at Northwestern University, never once did she consider that underneath Clint Eastwood’s gruff veneer was… a gruffer layer, but… underneath that was the heart of “…an ethicist, a theologian even.” Vaux recently published a...
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October 1, 2012
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How Illegal?
Some students today are getting so good at rationalizing it’s scary. “You could study for two hours and get an 80, or you could take a risk and get a 90.” “When it came to French class, where the teacher had literally taught me nothing all year, and during the final the students around me were openly discussing the answers,...
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September 28, 2012
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Is Honesty the Best Policy?
To begin with, I searched the internet with the question. The first link that showed up… no joke: “Honesty Is Still The Best Policy Free Essays 1-20 www.OpPapers.com/…/honesty-is-still-the-best-policy-page1.html 20+ items – Free Essays on Honesty Is Still The Best Policy for students.” Notice the lack of any pretense: “for students” While there are plenty of polls (and rationalizations) that examine the question,...
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September 26, 2012
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A Cheat for All Seasons
A Man for All Seasons was an Academy Award winning film about a principled man standing up against the king of England.A Man for All Semesters – a review of a book which has won no awards, but received plenty of attention – is about an unprincipled hack who writes papers for students too lazy, ignorant or both for money then brags...
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September 24, 2012
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Perception Just Became Reality
For months the Democrats have painted Mitt Romney as out-of-touch, elite, and uncaring about the middle class. In conversations, I’ve defended him against many of those generalizations. While that was before his Libya statements, I kept thinking, he’ll bounce back. All that went out of the window with a video we shall now euphemistically call The 47% speech: . “There are 47...
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September 20, 2012

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