I had the good fortune of hearing Professor George E. Tinker, Native American theologian, speak on the matter of violence and war in the United States. Though it has been decades since I heard him, I remember vividly his analysis of our relationship with violence as an addiction. He said that getting over an addiction takes as long as the addiction existed. That idea has always stuck with me, and I believe it is a useful paradigm for us when…
Birthday of Frederick Douglass English enjoys an abundance of language for many things, largely the result of our inheritance from both Latin and Germanic languages. Thus, we can speak of both justice and righteousness. Sometimes proponents exhort us to use words from one source or the other – see for example George Orwell “Politics and the English Language” (1946). I prefer to relish the diversity and depth of English. What a joy that we can choose between melancholy and ennui…
We all learn it well from early youth on up – there are three branches of government, and through a system of checks and balances none of them are able to dominate the others. The idea of dividing up the power in a political system and then establishing ways for the constituent parts to restrain one another has a long history. Thus, in the Roman Republic there were the people, the senate, and the magistrates, each of which was situated…