In my 2005 book, What Do You Stand for? – Stories About Principles That Matter, I began tobacco insider Jeffrey Wigand’s story with these words: What do you do when you discover something wrong? What do you do with what you know? Do you remain silent or come forward? Do you remain loyal to the company or expose the truth?...

“When you are a leader and every week you have young people demonstrating with such a message, you cannot remain neutral… They helped me change.” – Emmanuel Macron, president of France At 16, climate activist Greta Thunberg is the youngest to ever have been selected as TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year.” “We cannot just continue living as if there...

I met Sarah Witmer at a meeting at The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation some time ago and, in looking through the non-profit’s website, came across a powerful speech she gave last year at an event for the organization. Sarah moved to Japan when she was 11-years old. “As I learned to speak Japanese,” she writes, “I was able to communicate...

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” – Thomas Paine, English-born, American philosopher and activist. Taken from Paine’s essay, The Crisis, those words were meant to inspire American revolutionaries as they faced an extraordinary moment of character. Considering our current crisis, what Paine writes next is worth reflection. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will,  » Read more about:...

In January 1972, John Dean, White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon, met with Attorney General John Mitchell and others to hear a plan proposed by G. Gordon Liddy for intelligence-gathering for Nixon’s re-election campaign. After the plan met with resistance, Liddy scaled it back and Mitchell approved a scheme that called for a break-in of Democratic Headquarters in the...

On July 16, 2019, Michigan’s Republican representative Justin Amash tweeted the following: “If you’re a Republican, please ask yourself if the party really represents your principles and values. You don’t need to become a Democrat. Simply stand up for what is right. America’s tradition of liberty is beautiful, and it depends on our love and respect for one another.” In...

The first warning came on September 5, 2018 when The New York Times published an anonymous Op-Ed from “a senior official in the Trump administration.” “The dilemma,” anonymous writes, “which [Trump] does not fully grasp, is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst...

I first met David Krieger at a talk he gave in 2000. What impressed me was his passion, commitment and soft-spoken approach to ending nuclear weapons, worldwide, (and I thought getting people to live more ethically was difficult!) Founded in 1982, The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s mission “is to educate, advocate, and inspire action for a just and peaceful world,...

It’s no longer about right vs. wrong; it’s about Democrat vs. Republican. It’s not about looking at the facts; it’s about looking at the latest tweet from the president. It’s not about loyalty to the Constitution; it’s about loyalty to a corrupt president and his die hard base. That’s Washington, in a nutshell. What’s missing from that curt analysis is...

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Fact-check: while attributed to Winston Churchill, versions of the expression existed as far back as the 1700s. Since the advent of social media, however, that cautionary quote needs serious updating and here’s why. Currently, more than 2.41 billion individuals use Facebook, of...