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Columns/Opinion

While U.S. looks the other way

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Asia last week to find a region in turmoil. China is flexing its military muscle throughout the region. North Korea is continuing to improve its nuclear capabilities. And political and economic relations between Japan and South Korea are deteriorating rapidly. Never has there been a greater need for an active American diplomatic role in Asia than now. But while U.S. officials regularly travel to the region, their main message is that America needs to take care of its own interests first. Washington will no longer provide the leadership on which ...

List of donors was no hit list. But was it fair?

On Monday, Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat who represents part of San Antonio in Congress and whose twin brother, Julián Castro, is running for president, tweeted out a list of 44 San Antonians who had made the maximum allowable donations to President Trump’s reelection campaign. “Sad to see,” Castro tweeted, arguing the campaign contributions “are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’” Republicans, as they say, pounced. “Democrats want to talk about inciting violence? This naming of private citizens and their employers is reckless ...

This generation got old, but hope never did

Teenagers were invented in the late 1950s. If that’s an exaggeration, it’s not as much of one as you may think. While there had been teenagers before, it wasn’t until the leading edge of the baby boom reached that milestone that the word took on its modern meaning. In the prosperity of those first years post-war and post-Depression, “teenage” came to be seen as a wholly separate phase of life, a way station between childhood and adulthood. Where once it had been common for people that age to help support the family or marry and make families of their own, these new ...

Silence is the welcome mat for hate

BY JOHN A. BOLT and SUSAN FAYE WONDERLAND [The lawyer] answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And [Jesus] said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:27-29) For the last year, the Synod of the Trinity, a regional governing body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has been focusing on the growing prevalence of hate and hate ...

E-commerce wired into behavior

Last week U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin argued that Amazon has “destroyed the retail industry across the United States” and so the Department of Justice is “absolutely right” to investigate it. Both of those premises are dubious: The U.S. retail industry is changing but is very much alive, thank you — and rewriting the rules of antitrust law would hurt the American economy. First there is the matter of Mnuchin’s assertion about the retail sector. He is not wrong that brick-and-mortar retail sales are flat (if that’s what he meant by “destroyed”). But ...

Freedom of assembly under fire in Colorado Springs

Do law-abiding American citizens still have the right to gather peacefully to discuss their ideas without fear of government censorship and retribution? In my adopted hometown of Colorado Springs, the answer is “No” if you believe in border control or question whether the U.S. can survive as a nation-state. The answer is “No” if you wish to meet with others to express concern about the unsustainability of U.S. immigration policy. The answer is “No” if you dare to speak unvarnished truths about the deleterious security and economic impacts of illegal immigrants, ...