In 16th Century Italy, Niccolò Machiavelli was a nice enough guy until he discovered something. (Don’t let that smile fool you.) Political philosophers believed the most successful government required leaders to be moral, upstanding citizens. However, based on his experience in government, Machiavelli saw things differently. After he was booted out of authority, he wrote a little book entitled The...

In his weekly column in the Washington Post, Nicholas Kristof writes that despite Trump’s clear call for insurrection last week, “…a new poll finds that 75 percent of Republican voters continue to approve of Trump’s presidency. “As I was writing my column,” Kristof says, “I had a call with a childhood friend who told me about his ‘inside information’ that...

The Incitement — There’s an old Russian fable that goes like this… A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river on the frog’s back. Afraid of being stung, the frog hesitates. The scorpion argues that if it did that, they’d both drown. The frog considers this sensible and agrees to carry the scorpion. Midway across the river,...

“This building is dedicated by his colleagues to the memory of Philip A. Hart with affection, respect, and esteem. A man of incorruptible integrity and personal courage strengthened by inner grace and outer gentleness, he elevated politics to a level of purity that will forever be an example to every elected official. He advanced the cause of human justice, promoted...

The assault on Capitol Hill yesterday that the entire world witnessed was nothing less than a 9/11-like domestic insurgency willfully initiated by a president whose words of derision and division lit the match of anarchy akin to the Civil War. American history has endured irrational demagogues before – Joseph R. McCarthy, George Wallace. Now, we are experiencing the diseased, unhinged-from-reality...

Salud Carbajal is the U.S. Representative from California’s 24th congressional district. In a phone call late last night from his office in Washington, he gave me this firsthand account. “Due to the Covid virus, most members were in their offices when protestors were marching toward the Capitol. Only those Senators or House members that had a direct role in the...

With a number of GOP House members planning to challenge the election of Joe Biden on Wednesday, Texas Representative and Republican, Chip Roy has a solution. In a respectful but frank statement, Roy states that newly elected GOP House members elected on the same ballot as President Trump should be subjected to the same scrutiny. “Today, I objected to the...

While Americans continue to struggle with a deadly virus and financial starvation, excellence in national leadership has been reduced to a group of toxic enablers that appeal to an insular “base” that promotes our worst impulses instead of our best. The ’60s suffered its own challenges. Civil rights. Vietnam. The assassination of three political leaders. But then something stunning happened....

“No good deed goes unpunished.” — Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright Reading about the greatest Greeks in history, I came across Aristides “The Just,” and wondered how a military general and politician came to be recognized for his moral rectitude. Aristides, who lived between 530 – 468 BC, came to prominence as a strategos (general) who led Athens against...

We are living in dangerous times. In his biography of George Washington, Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that President Washington led the country “by directness, by deference and by manifest dedication to duty.” Donald Trump is the polar opposite of Washington in character and duty. Indeed, Washington would be sickened to see that the nation’s capital that bears his name has...