Recent Integrity Commentaries

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Trust but Verify
In the Contemporary Ethics class held at the New Hampshire Technical Institute where I assist in teaching, the one value I spend the greatest amount of time discussing is the most vital, Trust. Vital because of the number of the additional values that are essential. Using the Josephson Institute’s list of core ethical values, trust encompasses four separate values: Honesty...
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December 17, 2020
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How Can We Restore Our Faith in Democracy?
“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.…” – Winston Churchill We think of America as exceptional, the leader of the free world, an example of doing the right thing. However, we’ve made our share of...
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November 23, 2020
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The Will of Good Men
In October 1962, an American U-2 reconnaissance flight discovered Russian offensive missiles in Cuba, posing a direct threat to the United States. In the film adaptation of Robert Kennedy’s Thirteen Days, about the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and Russia stood at the abyss of nuclear war. After Russian sponsored Cuban missiles shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, President...
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November 11, 2020
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This Fever of Fear
During the Trump presidency, 35 to 40 percent of Americans have been consumed by a fever of fear: fear of immigrants; fear of black and brown Americans; fear of election security. (The only thing Trump has told supporters not to fear is the coronavirus.) However, Trump’s greatest abuse is sowing doubt and distrust; doubt climate science; distrust our intelligence communities...
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October 26, 2020
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Truth, Context, Perspective
For more than two decades, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith reported the events of the day without fear, favor or attacks from President Trump and the network’s opinionistas. Nonetheless, Smith shocked his colleagues a year ago when he ended his broadcast to announce his departure. “Gathering and reporting the news has been my life’s work… FOX has allowed me to...
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October 9, 2020
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Our Last Hope
Sitting before the Senate Watergate hearings on June 25, 1973, former counsel to Richard Nixon, John Dean, described a meeting with the president. “I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it.” In our current context, the president...
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September 10, 2020
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From Conflict to Kindness
“To meet the challenge of our times… we must first defeat the enemy within.” —Robert F. Kennedy While Kennedy was addressing corruption in labor unions, he could have spoken those words today, given the multiple challenges we face: — A massive virus; unemployment; a struggling economy; companies struggling with new protections for workers and protocols for conducting business; attacks against...
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July 9, 2020
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Why I Continue to Write About Trump
He is an angry, arrogant, bigoted, unprincipled narcissist who was elected to the U.S. presidency by the slimmest of margins. He is the most illiterate, contradictory, and inarticulate individual who has ever held the highest office in the land. According to the watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), he has more than 3,000 conflicts of interest....
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May 22, 2020
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Duty, Courage, Sacrifice
Those are the three words that come to mind when I think about military in the field. They’re also critical when they’re not in the field. The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt carries 4,800 men and women, all sailors trained to perform specific jobs that ultimately ensure the safety of Americans at home and abroad. However, Captain Brett Crozier never expected...
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April 24, 2020
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How Do We Restore America’s Integrity?
We have survived crises before. However, the events we are now facing have brought about an unimaginable chain reaction. This is not the America many of us grew up with and loved. We’ve faced down bullies before, but these current threats come in a different form: deceit, corruption, unreason, and disease; not just disease from a deadly virus, but an...
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April 13, 2020