It should have surprised no one when, on Aug. 19, Donald Trump announced his outreach to African-American voters. He did it by tapping into the same “village” spirit that made America great in the first place. First, he reminded African-Americans they have been consistently and deliberately ignored by the Democratic Party for more than 50 […]
Bruce Robinson: The Red Queen and Obama’s legacy
Remember The Red Queen in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”? If you’re a millennial, probably not. Some may think it’s Helena Bonham Carter, the actress who played The Red Queen in Tim Burton’s 2010 film version starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. But, as one anonymous online reviewer of that glitzy production observed, “Poor Lewis […]
Bruce Robinson: A culture of honor
(Note: This was originally published in the March 29, 2012 edition) Writing in the Wall Street Journal on March 16, the well-known political scientist Charles Murray points out that there has been a fundamental cultural change in recent years and, as he argues in his latest book Coming Apart, it threatens to shred the basic […]
Bruce Robinson: Teach to the task, not to the test
(Note: This was originally published in the March 6, 2012 edition of the Herald) Here’s the latest news on the education front: Twenty-six more states have asked to be exempt from the No Child Left Behind Act. That’s on top of the 11 states Obama gave a special dispensation to last month. If the president […]
Bruce Robinson: Where’s our common cents?
(Note: This article was originally published in the December 18, 2011 edition of the Herald) How do people get rich? In America, most people get rich at first by working hard and saving whatever they can. Eventually, they save enough to invest in stocks. If the economy is good, the value of their stock increases […]
Bruce Robinson: Vetting the vets
(Note: This article was originally published in the December 7, 2011 edition of the Herald) “There’s no better defense than an aggressive defense.” “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” These immortal utterances by a 20th Century football coach and an 18th Century lexicographer may seem like strange sources of political wisdom, but there’s […]
Bruce Robinson: “A foolish consistency” or the “iron string”?
(Note: This was originally published in the May 1, 2016 edition of the Herald) It has been 174 years since the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson first published his 10,000-word essay titled “Self-Reliance.” [http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm] Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, school and college textbooks included at least a condensed version of this essay […]
Bruce Robinson: How We Got to “Compensation Coercion”
We Americans have always been suckers for sacred cows, whether it’s in slogans like “X is as American as apple pie” or in our commercial obsession with Mother’s Day. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against apple pie or mothers. The most important women in my life have all been mothers and, next to […]
Bruce Robinson: Hot stuff
NO, THIS ISN’T ABOUT SEX. It’s about carbon footprints — yours, mine and that of just about every other living creature that walks, crawls or flies over the face of God’s green Earth. Once the California Legislature passed America’s first full-blown cap-and-trade law, we Californians all became very hot stuff indeed! I know because I […]
Bruce Robinson: The diversity diversion
MOST OF US UNDERSTAND why a big company might need a CEO, CFO, CIO and COO. But a top-level diversity boss? What’s that about? Today there are CDOs in the executive suites of most U.S. corporations, including AT&T, Dell, Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble, as well as at the helm […]