We live in a time of profound political divisions, more so than ever before. Fear, frustration, and anger dominate the national conversation from Trump rallies to pundit panels. Many of his supporters’ emotions come from real concerns about jobs, security, and social changes. These are significant issues deserving significant attention. In this moment of crisis, however, what concerns me most...

Fed by misinformation and half-truths, fear pushes us to distrust others, retreat into ourselves, see threats where there are none. Fear convinces us the world is more hostile than it truly is, seeing things through the lens of “Us vs. Them,” cutting us off from the compassion, understanding, and cooperation that can bring us together. Fear has always been present,...

While the Gettysburg Address is one of the most remembered and well-regarded, it was not Lincoln’s greatest speech. His second inaugural address was far superior and can be viewed as a prophecy for today’s divided nation: “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought...

The Date: September 28, 1955 The Place: Yankee Stadium The Event: Dodgers/Yankees, Game 1 of the 1955 World Series Every baseball fan has seen the video. Every baseball fan knows the outcome . . . or do they? I’ll come back to this. For my book, What Do You Stand For?, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns spoke to me about the...

At the end of the month, 30 teams will step out of the dugout to begin another season of Major League Baseball. Thirty rookies are among them. Seventy-six years ago, a rookie stepped out of the dugout and into history. His name was Jack Roosevelt Robinson. In a conversation for my book, What Do You Stand For? documentarian Ken Burns...

This began as a story about gratitude, and yet, we can’t turn away from the cancer of hate and violence that is slowly eating away America’s soul. With the recent shooting at an LGPTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado that left 5 dead and 18 injured,  “Far-Right influencers made LGPTQ people into targets,” The Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) Hatewatch...

Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, The New York Times reported, told supporters at a recent rally. “My campaign has no place for hate, bigotry and intolerance. . . .” “Intolerance towards men is always reprehensible. But often times intolerance is provoked by injudicious and erroneous policies.” While the first statement was made by Mastriano, the second...

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it . . . ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect...

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”— writer, philosopher George Santayana In simpler terms: People who don’t learn from their mistakes don’t grow up. People who shut out the truth about the past, the present or both remain trapped in their own fear. “In Oklahoma,” The New York Times reports, “a bill was introduced in the...

SPECIAL EDITION – HOW PRESIDENT BIDEN CAN INSPIRE ALL OF US, TONIGHT. The New York Times asked four columnists to offer their own State of the Union speech. Columnist David Brooks’s words are the most honest, credible, humble, forward-thinking, and inspiring I’ve heard in years! Here’s what Brooks believes Biden should say, tonight. My fellow Americans: “People always talk about...