“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” – Henry David Thoreau I first read Walden back in high school. At the start, the pace felt slow, but once I settled into the rhythm, I was pulled in. Henry David Thoreau wasn’t simply a nature lover; he was...

In a letter to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God … I contemplate with sovereign reverence … thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” In my commentary, “When Power Rewrote the Message” (July 17), I opened with this question:...

“The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.” Those words, spoken by Erika Kirk at her husband Charlie’s memorial service, cut through grief and politics with startling clarity. They were not about party or power. They were about...

In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” a traveler stands at a fork in the woods. The traveler chooses the path “less traveled by” and later says it “made all the difference.” While I once saw it as a high school analogy about life’s choices, I now see as a reminder that every step—small or large—shapes not only who we...

The sunset knows no trouble, no urgency, no fear. It simply glows, free of the burdens that weigh on us. And yet, when we look closely, we see more than color; we see meaning. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Sunsets are always lovely, but they are loveliest when seen from the hilltops.” He was reminding us about perspective. From higher ground....

Washington is far too often remembered for its scandals than its triumphs—a reality that would have stunned and saddened our first president. Yet history’s true measure lies with those who chose conscience over expedience, and duty over ambition.  Their choices came at a cost, but they show us what integrity in public life looks like—and how it can still guide...

It is the First Amendment that allows President Donald Trump to repeatedly say he won the 2020 election—when, in fact, he did not. It is the First Amendment that permitted Donald Trump to call those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, “patriots.” That same Amendment allowed the president to say COVID-19 would “disappear, like a miracle.” It is...

UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS COMMENTARY  I said I would ease up on writing about Trump, and I meant it. Yet the president’s recent actions have been too blatant, too corrosive, to let pass without comment. Eight months into his second term, Donald Trump continues to show that his goal is not to bring Americans together, but to drive...

French philosopher Voltaire once observed, “Common sense is not so common.” Thomas Paine trusted it anyway and helped inspire a revolution built on it. In January 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, a pamphlet that spoke in plain, direct language ordinary colonists could understand. English by birth, Paine became an extraordinary patriot. His words cut through chaos at one of...

The murder of Charlie Kirk–gunned down while speaking at Utah Valley University–is another brutal reminder of how political beliefs can metastasize into hatred. On the night of April 4, 1968, after learning that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy stood on the back of a flatbed truck before a largely African American crowd in Indianapolis...