“Why do we study ethics? What does it mean to be a person of character, integrity, honor?” Those were the questions I posed to students at the beginning of a week-long class at the New Hampshire Technical Institute on ethics. “Most people want to do the right thing,” I said. “They want to be worthy of the respect and admiration...

To begin with… it was cold. The kind of cold that makes a New Hampshire apple snap with juicy flavor. Unfortunately January is not apple time, and I was not there to enjoy the fruit of the state but the fruit of knowledge.  (I know… I know. This explains why I’m not Robert Frost.) I arrived at the New Hampshire Technical...

January 20, 1961, I sat in my seventh grade homeroom class while the teacher rolled in a big, black & white television and announced that we would all be watching history today. What I was unprepared for was how quiet and engaged everyone in class would be in watching John Fitzgerald Kennedy take the oath of office as the 35th...

Last Wednesday, President Obama spoke in words elegiac at the memorial for the shooting victims in Tucson, Arizona.  Four days later, John McCain wrote a great op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post. “President Obama gave a terrific speech Wednesday night,” the Republican Senator wrote. “He encouraged every American who participates in our political debates – whether we are on the...

The following, written by David Krieger, gives us a closer examination of President Eisenhower’s final thoughts before leaving office, regarding the growth of military budgets. It’s interesting to look at in light of today’s continuing build-up of nuclear weapons in particular. Yesterday, January 17, 2011 was the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation in which he...

Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint is the Director of the Media Center at the Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston and one of the nation’s leading psychiatrists. He is also a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. A highly regarded specialist on race relations in America, Dr. Poussaint has served as a consultant to many corporations and government agencies. He...

After closely following these commentaries and reading the results of the survey, Discordant Voices, I’m sure you’re all asking… “So, where’s the promised book, Jim?” While I was hoping the e-book– an ethical examination of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter – would be ready this past fall, I’m now looking at a March release date. Besides making sure that all...

“There is something about too much prosperity that ruins the fiber of the people.”      – Diplomat Dwight Morrow In 1933, the president awoke to the news that the United States banking system had collapsed. Unemployment had reached 25 percent. Hourly wages nose-dived 60 percent. Distraught dairy farmers blockaded highways in order to dump hundreds of gallons of milk in...

In their annual roundup of factually incorrect stories of 2010, Politifact.com, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning project set-up by the St. Petersburg Times, offered this example from Fox News’ Glenn Beck. “On his Nov. 22 radio show,” Politifact reports, “Beck told the story of Wilmington, a town of 13,000 people in Southwest Ohio that lost about 8,600 jobs when DHL Express, its largest employer,  » Read...

I met Karen Armstrong two years ago at a local talk she gave on the release of her book The Case for God – a thoughtful and highly readable history of the importance of belief. In a brief but private conversation, I found her engaged, informed and always searching; searching to learn more from whomever she spoke with or interviewed. Armstrong’s latest...