Wrong vision for the GOP and America

June 10, 2019

Conservatives are engaged in a fierce intramural debate over their future in the GOP. Like all such debates, it can seem opaque — even its participants aren’t sure what they’re arguing about — but the implications for both the tenor and content of American politics are profound. The debate is sprawling, but its contours are defined: One side wants to restore the old fusion between social and economic conservatism. The other wants to abandon it and embrace President Trump’s authoritarian traditionalist vision. There is no authoritarian traditionalist future for the ...

Candidates’ proposals on climate just the beginning

June 10, 2019

What a difference three years make. In the last presidential election, climate change was virtually nowhere to be found as a campaign issue. Donald Trump denied its very existence, and while Hillary Clinton had a platform plank dedicated to it, she didn’t spend a whole lot of campaign time talking about it. (The issue did have more prominence in the Democratic primaries, propelled by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.) And the media didn’t press the issue too much, either. Even during the televised debates, where journalists could have forced the question, they left it alone. That ...

The president’s defenders are not bad people

June 10, 2019

John Pavlovitz is a liberal, widely read Christian pastor who has composed an internet article saying good people don’t defend a bad man. And you know who he’s talking about, of course: none other than President Donald Trump, whose deplorable supporters have climbed from a basket into the crosshairs of a sanctimonious sharpshooter. Let me first respond by saying good people do not threaten the basic principles of our democracy in order to be bad to a bad man. Few see Mother Teresa in golden hair when they look at Trump. They know his narcissistic, vulgar, scatterbrained ways and ...

A presidential Trump lands at Normandy

June 10, 2019

“These are the boys of Pointe de Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs … These are the heroes.” — President Reagan These are the presidents of Pointe du Hoc. These are the leaders who come to the cliffs that overlook the beaches of Normandy, France, on special anniversary years, and honor the heroes who took the cliffs, liberated France and waged the war that saved the world. It was Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, then Allied Supreme Commander and later America’s 34th president, who ordered the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, and sent those men and boys on their ...

Where’s bioethics commission?

June 10, 2019

Hardly a week seems to pass without a major news story about another controversy in bioethics: A scientist in China uses CRISPR to produce genetically edited twins, an Italian surgeon recruits a potential patient for a human head transplant, a Nebraska woman gives birth to her own granddaughter. These cases cry out for the wisdom of experts in medicine, law and philosophy — knowledgeable authorities who can shape public discussions and advise policymakers. And yet, more than two years since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the United States remains without a bioethics ...

The president walks into a bar

June 7, 2019

How sense of humor has changed forever during the Trump era So, Bill Clinton walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. Bartender says, “Does he talk?” Parrot says, “Not for less than 500 grand.” That’s an old-fashioned political joke — old-fashioned as in the 1990s. It takes a recognizable slice of truth, gives it an unexpected twist and out comes a little laugh that leaves no mark. Today’s American political humor is different, reflecting a drastically different country than the one late-night legend Johnny Carson bid farewell to 27 years ago this ...