In the early 1970s, the most popular show on television was “All in the Family,” a sitcom produced by legendary writer and producer Norman Lear. The show traced the ups and downs of the Bunker family, and was a groundbreaking show for its day. While sitcoms in the 1960s – shows like “Gilligan’s Island,” “Bewitched” […]
Matt Talbot: Some thoughts on Black Lives Matter
A common objection I have heard to the Black Lives Matter movement is, “Well, don’t ALL lives matter?” The thing is, I doubt very many people in the movement would disagree with that. In fact, that is the point of the movement: that all lives, including black lives, matter. A few years ago, a woman […]
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 […]
Devon Minnema: The differences in breaking the law
I have written before about the rule of law. I’ve talked a lot about how it seems to be crumbling in the face of corruption at the government’s highest levels. I’m sure at some point I even claimed that there were two different sets of rules in the country. I now believe that is wrong. […]
Matt Talbot: Crime, fear and reality
On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump posted the following on his Twitter account: “Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse. Look what is going on in Chicago and our inner cities. Not good!” Something about that didn’t seem right, so I checked crime statistics for both Chicago and for the nation as a whole. […]
Matt Talbot: Some thoughts on the American auto industry
American luxury sedans dating from before the 1974 oil crisis. That column was, in part, an elegy for a vanished Golden Age of American manufacturing. In that column, I wrote: “It is hard to convey, at this remove, how completely American car companies used to dominate the American market. As recently as the mid-70s General […]
Mrs. B’s Blather: The search for authenticity
How might our search for authenticity manifest itself? So many articles about The Don, Trump, Donald Trump….We know he is crass, bigoted, brash, nasty, bold, unrestrained, uninhibited and shocking. Yet so many Americans are drawn to the fact that he is real. Did reality TV get us ready for the underbelly of our personality […]
Devon Minnema: The perversion of liberal and conservative ideologies
It seems that terms and ideologies have been completely scrambled, not just in this election cycle, but in the course of American history. For instance, the argument of “conservative” versus “liberal” today would utterly confuse the Founding Fathers, who actually felt that the roots of words imbued significance through cultural history not just the social […]
Matt Talbot: The United States of America is a beautiful country
Regular readers will know that I’ve offered my share of critiques of the United States in this space over the years. I offer them not because I hate America, but because I love her enough to believe she can be better, and I trust her enough to know that in the long run she will […]
Matt Talbot: Some thoughts on Universal Basic Income
I’ve come across the idea of a “Universal Basic Income” in the last few months, and the idea is interesting enough that I thought I’d devote some column space to it this week. The idea is fairly simple to explain: under most schemes, every adult citizen would receive an income sufficient to provide a basic, […]