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Columns/Opinion

A harsher but more meaningful life

“When you are told all your life you’re dumb, unworthy, you start believing it. God changed that for me.” Jerry, from Youngstown, Tenn., hesitated to be interviewed by Chris Arnade, because “I don’t know my ABCs, so I can’t really talk right.” He told Arnade, the author of the new book “Dignity: Seeing Respect in Back Row America”: “I got nothing of worth to say, not anything anybody would want to read about.” Arnade talks him into it, suggesting his views might be of worth to others. Jerry was raised “dirt poor” in a military family, “the son of ...

Why do selfies of women look like Rockettes?

It must have been the nth time in one day I’d seen a Facebook photo of a group of women I know standing in what I think of as that pose. If you are female and between, say, 15 and 55, and if you spend any time on social media, you have no doubt seen something similar: Bodies turned slightly, shoulders toward the camera, front legs bent at the knee, front feet balanced on pointed toes. Sometimes, the women are all turned in the same direction, akin to a chorus line. Sometimes an imaginary line divides the group, with each half turned toward the middle, mirroring one another. I ...

But speaking is to act, as well

Last week President Trump flew to Britain, our closest ally. But before Air Force One’s wheels touched the tarmac, Trump had called the mayor of London a “stone cold loser.” And he called a royal in-law and fellow American, Meghan Markle, “nasty.” Name-calling is rude and generally counterproductive. What could Trump gain by insulting his hosts? Wouldn’t millions, on both sides of the Atlantic, have cheered if the Queen had scolded Trump like a schoolboy and sent him home until he could behave? But my always-Trump friends are not put off by his name-calling and ...

Abortion flip hurts Biden and his party

Maybe Joe Biden had to flip on the question of taxpayer funding for abortion in order to win the Democratic presidential nomination. All of his rivals supported that funding, and the party has become more and more aggressive on abortion. Where the 1990s Democratic platforms said abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” the 2016 platform dropped that defensive note and included an explicit call to end the longstanding ban on using federal Medicaid funds for elective abortions. But there will be a cost to Biden’s choice. First, it puts Biden on the unpopular side of the ...

Special prayers (or not) for the nation’s president

Only the most partisan person would begrudge prayers for the president of the United States, but a recent visit by President Trump to the mega McLean Bible Church in Virginia has rubbed some congregants the wrong way. The White House informed the church with only a few minutes notice that the president would be coming to the service after finishing a round of golf at a nearby course. It was a Sunday on which some Christian leaders had called for special prayers for the president and others wished to pray for the victims and relatives in the recent shooting in Virginia Beach. The ...

New laws may save Roe v. Wade

Alabama’s historic ban of abortion from the onset of pregnancy has jolted the public and highlighted the fragility of reproductive rights. This law comes on the heels of “heartbeat” statutes passed this year in Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana and Missouri, and under consideration in numerous other states. These statutes earned their title because they outlaw abortion at six to eight weeks, when the “fetal heart” supposedly begins to beat. In fact, at that stage, there is no fetus, let alone a beating heart — only an embryo with a cluster of vibrating ...