There’s a moment in every uncertain time when loyalty stops sounding like a virtue and starts sounding like a test. Not the healthy kind of loyalty: steadfastness to community, shared purpose, and a set of obligations we freely accept. I mean the kind that demands a simple answer to a complicated question: Are you with us, or against us? The...

That line from The Little Prince by French aviator and author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is the essence of the story and the essence of what we too often forget: that the most meaningful truths, character and love, can’t be photographed or seen. They have to be felt. You might not think that what many consider a children’s story has anything...

Near the end of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Statue of Liberty, historian David McCullough reflects on the statue’s symbolism. “She isn’t a warrior. She isn’t bombastic or threatening. She isn’t a symbol of power. The Statue of Liberty is an act of faith.” McCullough emphasizes the core values that have always been essential to America’s growth and resilience in...

I’ve been revisiting Ken Burns’ series on the history of baseball, and it sparked some interesting comparisons to a subject that headlines the news daily. Baseball values sportsmanship, fairness, and integrity. Politics far too often involves the polar opposite. While character has once been evident in the halls of Congress (I haven’t figured out which halls, yet), it now seems...

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...

I begin with a conversation I had with documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns. “The most powerful guiding principle in my life,” Burns begins, “has been and is now the conviction that the past is indeed prologue and we cannot know where we are headed if we do not understand from whence we came. From this, we can clearly see the futility...