In moments of national crisis, a nation discovers whether its founding principles are merely words on paper, or values worth defending. As the 150th anniversary of the United States Bill of Rights approached in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted the anniversary to do more than commemorate history, he wanted it to remind Americans what they stood for. To...

I had just learned of the passing of a good friend and colleague, Colman McCarthy when the memories began to return. Before I ever met him, he had already lived a life that quietly defied the usual measures of success. For nearly three decades, from 1969 to 1997, he wrote columns for The Washington Post, covering politics, religion, health, sports,...

In 1927, Sinclair Lewis gave America a character it did not want to recognize in the mirror: Elmer Gantry. Gantry is loud, magnetic, insatiable — a sinner with a capital “S.” He does not discover faith; he discovers its usefulness. He learns that fear, properly stirred, can fill a sanctuary. Redemption, properly marketed, can build an empire. Gantry bellows and...

It’s just a photograph: a wartime dog sitting alert, ears up, wearing a military harness. But the story about a World War II sentry dog named Chips turns out to be less about lore than about something rarer and more unsettling: courage without calculation. In July 1943, in Sicily, Chips, without hesitation, ran straight at a machine-gun nest, scattering the...

A cancer has been growing in our national life, so embedded in our culture that we’ve stopped acknowledging it. In the 1940s and the decades that followed, there were certainly moments of disrespect—some private, some national—but they weren’t worn as badges of honor. Today, they’ve become normalized and set the tone in our national discourse. Ethics specialist Michael Josephson teaches...

“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”— Yvon Chouinard “Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem”—Eric Hoffer “Retreat, Hell! We’re just advancing in another direction.”–General O.P. Smith, UN Forces Leader, Korean War. “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right”–Albert Einstein. “Of...

There are moments when a single arrest tells us more about the state of the country than a thousand speeches. The recent detention of Don Lemon while covering a protest inside a church is one of those moments—not because of who he is, but because of what it signals. “I was walking up to the room, and I pressed the...

Over the past several months, I’ve written commentaries revisiting moments in our history when individuals confronted serious challenges and rose to meet them — to remind us who we are and what we stand for. After writing about the tragedy in Minneapolis, I briefly turned to Steve Allen, an entertainer known for his intelligent wit — not to diminish what...

From the man who invented The Tonight Show. What Steve Allen understood—long before humor became sharper and more performative—is that laughter can be light and still leave a mark. His humor was humane and light, an invitation, not an attack. In a moment when so much public conversation feels joyless, this feels less like nostalgia and more like a reminder...

There are moments in history when power reveals its true character. During World War II, no American general was more central to victory than George C. Marshall. As Army Chief of Staff, Marshall oversaw the most rapid military expansion in U.S. history, transforming a modest peacetime force into an army of more than eight million. He selected commanders, managed logistics...