James Keye I created this list of “American Myths” 25 years ago thinking that some significant part of the people would begin to understand them over time. What seems to be happening is that the country is dividing into those who cling with increasing aggression to these myths as others realize the falseness of them.…
Richard Sahn In 1933 Dorothy Day, a progressive journalist and Catholic convert, and Peter Maurin, a French peasant and philosopher, founded an anarchist-pacifist movement and newspaper they called the “Catholic Worker.” The paper was meant to be the Christian answer to the Communist Party paper, “The Daily Worker.” Not affiliated with the Catholic Church,…
Michael Brenner Why bother with facts? That question threads its way through political discourse, through educational philosophy and through observations on the media. Rarely is it confronted squarely. For the lines between actual reality and virtual reality have been so blurred that the distinction itself no longer is generally recognized. The axiom that since I…
P. J. Sullivan There is a wireless revolution going on. From “smart” phones to “smart” grids to Wi-Fi to unmanned drones to driverless cars, everything seems to be going wireless, with little or no consideration of the consequences to human health. There are red flags linking wireless radiation to serious disorders: leukemia, brain tumors, heart arrhythmias,…
W.J. Astore I read old stuff. Heck, I’m a historian: that’s what I’m supposed to do. So I was reading an old pamphlet on “The Indiana World War Memorial” (circa 1940) and came across the Pledge of Allegiance as it was recited before McCarthyism reared its ugly head in the 1950s: I pledge allegiance to…
Henry Pelifian The Hollywood Western is truly an American creation that epitomized the hardship to maintain and restore justice. The inequality, greed and corruption were rampant in the Westerns of Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Tim Holt, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea. There are singular Westerns from actors who did not specialize in the Western genre…
Henry Pelifian Favoritism in public arenas, to include “private” sectors, has as many pitfalls as there are minds which embrace it. While favoritism in one’s private life is a preference that one may embrace as a choice (often involving one’s family and friends), favoritism in public arenas is perilous for it embraces policies and decisions based…
Richard Sahn Not a day goes by in our local newspaper that there isn’t a letter to the editor blaming people who are facing economic hardship in America because they simply refuse to get a job. And any job will do, says a recent “letter to the editor.” Any job? Does “any job” mean that…
b. traven In 1937 my father died and my mother was left penniless with three young boys under twelve. She didn’t go to pieces, or maybe she did and I just didn’t know, but we moved to poorer quarters and she got a job handing out samples of food in the big local department store…
W.J. Astore OK. I should know better. When you pay attention to what conservatives are saying at the Iowa Freedom Forum, attended as it is by religious activists, you’re going to hear kookiness and craziness. But what’s sad is how the “red meat” issues raised by the likes of Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, and Rick…
The Contrary Perspective 