Home Columns Books Papers Biography Contact

"Tradition?? The only good traditions are food traditions. The rest are repressive."

"There are two ways to think. The first is to trust to your ancestors, your religious leaders, or your charismatic professors. The second is to question, to challenge, to explore history for meanings, and to analyze issues. This latter is called Critical Thinking, and it is this that is the mission of my web site. "

Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman  

November 2023

Minority Rule (1 of 2)


If one were to ask dozens of people on the street what is wrong with our country today, they would probably say the lies that have divided us into factions, or the tremendous gap in earnings between the corporate heads and the rest, or the corruption in the legal community (the Supreme Court the most) that suggests our justice system is crumbling

A new book, just released, has made me see a bigger picture about what is wrong with us and how it can be fixed. In the book: Ty more...

Print

July 2022

Critical Race Theory Conspiracy


The Republican "Base," the followers of Donald Trump, are scornful of "elites," by which they mean educated. Elites once included the rich and powerful, but these categories don?t bother the true believers as much as the "intellectuals."

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is the product of scholar-advocates in the 1970s and 1980s at university level, who were interested in exploring how law and other forms of public policy could secure and protect civil rights, yet simultaneously more...

Print

Saving America?s Democracy (1 of 2)


Last week, we reviewed America?s dismal performance on the world list of democracies. We do not have a national process for elections, leaving that to the states. Pluralism is certainly missing in our elections now, with one political party in meltdown (Republicans).

Civil liberties are under attack in a number of states. When Florida can punish a private company (Disney) for not supporting Florida?s attack on women, gays, and transgender children, civil liberties are in more...

Print

World Survey of Democracies


Two valuable non-partisan surveys track the standing of 166 sovereign states, 164 of them UN member states. One is the Democracy Index, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a UK-based private company which publishes The Economist.

The other is Freedom House, a non-profit, majority U.S. government- funded organization in Washington, D.C., that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, more...

Print

November 2021

Vladimir Putin Again

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Cold War ended with the United States the winner. Pundits worried about the world with just one superpower, but for a time our model of representative government and free market economics inspired much of the world to give it a try.

Russia emerged naked from its collapse, most of its former captive empire declaring independence. But it didn?t take long for the Russians to re-take its Central Asian colonies by placing Soviet-trained authoritaria more...

Print

August 2021

Threats to Democracy

Historians of democracy are becoming alarmed at the possibility of the United States, the oldest continuous participatory government in the world, may be on the verge of losing this system.

We have had close calls in the past. The Civil War threatened to cut this nation in two, but the election of Abraham Lincoln saved us. Even during that dreadful conflict, we held an election in the Union north and Lincoln was reelected to his second term.

The slave-owning Southe more...

Print

American History Culture Wars


The Russians have long been the masters of propaganda, the infiltration of conspiracy theories and big lies in the hope of sowing dissention in democracies. They have used these methods to keep their own populations from critical thinking that might result in revolt or (in a make-believe democracy) vote them out of power.

Their efforts go back to the late 19th century, when they manufactured a notorious lie, "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion," that pretended to be a sec more...

Print

America?s Dilemma: Polarization

We are suffering from one of our nation?s recurring problems: polarization. Our very nation?s birth took place during a phase of polarization: those wanting independence from our British governors, those rejecting this independence (preferred the status quo), and those too ignorant to care.

In those days, our most educated sector opted for creating a new nation, one not ruled by the British king and country. They wanted self-rule, an opportunity for those steeped in the history more...

Print

Census Analysis (2 of 2)


In the 1990s, an alarmist but popular program was the need for zero population growth. Warnings were circulated that population growth was reaching disaster proportions, with the collapse of civilization imminent. This alarm was mostly ignored, especially in the lesser developed world, with many women having seven or more children. Civilization did not collapse, but overpopulation certainly did make the lives of many very unpleasant. Food crises were met quickly by the United Nations Foo more...

Print

Rethinking Education (2)

The pandemic closing of schools has given us an opportunity to rethink what we want of our nation?s education. At our country?s beginning, education followed the elite British system of passing on the secular gifts of Roman and Greek knowledge, plus emphasis on the Hebrew and Greek biblical moral teachings. An added feature of this sort of education was political theory and thinking arising from the Greek and Roman experiments with republics.

This system rested on college-educated more...

Print

The Fate of the Republican Party

We are historically a two-party republic, a system that works in a country that is essentially centrist, electing representatives and presidents not far from moderately conservative or moderately liberal. We have found that this arrangement works for us most of the time, and has made us a more stable republic than many with a multi-party Parliamentary system.

However, we have undergone terrible periods in our history when the two major parties had irreconcilable differences. Both more...

Print

The Possible Great Leap Forward


George Packer, a brilliant staff writer at The Atlantic magazine was one of the essayists in the October issue, devoted to the theme of "Making America Again." The Atlantic has been extremely astute in predicting the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, better than any of the other speculations I have seen.

He begins: "The country is at a low point---our civic bonds frayed, our politics toxic. But we may be on the cusp of an era of radical reform that advances citize more...

Print

November 2020

A Country Almost Divided


With Joe Biden winning the election with a popular vote surplus of at least 4.5 million people and a decisive Electoral College win, I, along with millions of my fellow citizens, gave a huge sigh of relief. When I heard that even France rang bells of celebration at the news that America had rejoined the world, I wept. Four years of daily assaults on every American institution, including disregard for truth, had taken a toll on the many of us who watched Trump?s media circuses.
more...

Print

September 2020

Trashing Institutions


We would all do well to read Bret Stevens? wise column in the NYT: "Why Edmund Burke Still Matters." (August 5, 2020)

Edmund Burk was an 18th-century philosopher-stateman, a member of the British Parliament during two earth-shaking events: the French Revolution and the American Revolution. He annoyed most of his colleagues because he refused to be nailed down to a fixed political position. He was what one would call today "The Loyal Opposition," a person in opposition to more...

Print

Trashing Institutions


We would all do well to read Bret Stevens? wise column in the NYT: "Why Edmund Burke Still Matters." (August 5, 2020)

Edmund Burk was an 18th-century philosopher-stateman, a member of the British Parliament during two earth-shaking events: the French Revolution and the American Revolution. He annoyed most of his colleagues because he refused to be nailed down to a fixed political position. He was what one would call today "The Loyal Opposition," a person in opposition to more...

Print

Refusing Oversight

Our Founding Fathers knew that leaders would not always be honorable, honest, or uncorrupt. Our system is designed with divided power centers: administration (President), congress, and judiciary. It has worked over our two and a half centuries, sometimes better than other times. We have had corrupt governments every so often, usually outed by the press or good civil servants, but for the most part, by presidents following the norms of transparency.

We have learned that the best di more...

Print

Earning Their Spurs


At the annual Al Smith fundraising dinner in New York in October 2019, former secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, joked about his experience in the Trump administration:

"I?m not just an overrated general. I am the greatest, the world?s most overrated?I would just tell you too that I?m honored to be considered that by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I?m the Meryl Streep of generals?And frankly that sounds pretty good to me. more...

Print

That Which You Sow?


Actions have consequences. We all know this, something that good parentis teach children. In a recent column of mine, I referred to Darwin Awards: a mocking catalog of actions that have disastrous consequences, mainly removing the perpetrator from the gene pool.

Donald Trump has a serious problem: he wants to win reelection from a voter pool that has shrunk from its high of 49 percent. Polling, even that done by his propaganda organ, Fox News, is showing numbers well under more...

Print

"Incredible," and "Unbelievable," Indeed.

Words are a funny thing; they sometimes morph from one meaning to its opposite over time, as we can see today. President Trump?s limited vocabulary favors "incredible" and "unbelievable" every time he means "wonderful." Knowing how untrue most of his utterances are, I always take his "unbelievable" and "Incredible" literally: "not believable" and "not credible."

Among things not believable and not credible are his promotion of conspiracy theories: that the Coronavirus was created more...

Print

Presidents and Science in History


Our Founding Fathers were a product of the Enlightenment, the European movement promoting reason and the new sciences over belief systems. From the 17th century on, the "scientific method" locked horns with "tradition," "belief," and "unquestioned authority." The scientific revolution depended upon observation, experimentation, and repeatability in experimental findings. This scientific revolution happened only in Western Europe, which benefitted from a long history of knowledge acquired more...

Print

Filling the Leadership Gap


Without his political rallies to pump up his ego, President Trump has resorted to lengthy daily "Press Briefings" in which he endlessly congratulates himself, while elbowing out the scientists on the podium and butting in when they do speak. The dog-and-pony show on April 13 was a jaw-dropping two-hour rant, angry and spiteful about how unappreciated he was after the New York Times reported his failure of leadership, despite briefings and alerts to the danger of the pandemic. His intelli more...

Print

Saving Our Republic


In my last column: "Too Much Democracy," the question was raised that we were designed to be a republic, not a democracy, and now do we have too much democracy? The danger facing the survival of our liberal democracy (rule of law, private property, government of honorable and competent representatives and office holders) is facing divisions we have not experienced since the 1930s and 1850s.

Our founding fathers assumed that those holding office would have limited tenure a more...

Print

Presidential "Pardons"

The power to pardon felons is vested in the Constitution. It is the one inheritance from the history of monarchy that we have, but unlike kings with unlimited rights to pardon, presidents have this power only for federal offences. Pardoning is enmeshed in norms. It has been understood that a president should not pardon someone for his own political motives. Compassion or policy motives were the usual reasons that a president pardoned a convict.

President Obama, for example, addres more...

Print

The Real Pandemic: Lies

A new virus, the coronavirus, is sweeping the world. When our hunter-gatherer ancestors began settling in villages, towns, and later cities, and when they began livestock agriculture, diseases have spread from animal hosts to human beings, with no immunity at first. Throughout history, China, India, and Africa have been the incubators of disease outbreaks that then became worldwide.

In China, the problem was crossovers from animals kept for food use, starting with flu from swine, more...

Print

Providing National Security Advice to President


National security, since the time of President Harry Truman, has been the most essential duty of the President of the United States. It is designed to consider the complexity of formulating rational policies for how the country behaves in a dangerous world. Unlike the process in dictatorships, the President must not "shoot from the hip." We should elect presidents who have judgment, knowledge of history, and the ability to weigh multiple options.

The National Security Coun more...

Print

October 2019

Amending the Constitution


The political turmoil in American politics has spurred many experts to propose ways to save our democracy. This turmoil did not begin with President Trump, but he has accelerated it to a breaking point. We are once more relying on all the institutions aside from the Presidency to do their constitutional duties: Congress, the courts, the press, and the voters themselves.

An immediate problem with the Supreme Court is now getting attention. The Court, which at its best, has more...

Print

August 2019

Sticks and Stones: Words Matter


"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." This saying was aimed at children, to arm them against verbal bullies. It is also linked to our First Amendment, freedom of speech, even when people to say things that we hate, but protect their right to say them.

Such freedom, however, ends with speech that can endanger life: falsely crying "fire" in a crowded theater, or urging riot in the public square. "Let?s go kill the?.aristocrats" during the Fr more...

Print

Darwinian View of Women


It has taken thousands of years in which human beings struggled to evolve into the extraordinary beings we are today. Over that time, certain assumptions were widely accepted about the capabilities and values of women, the smaller and physically weaker of the two genders. Women were expected to provide sexual pleasure to men, to bear children and rear them, and to be free domestic and farm labor. Men were able to maintain this system through brute force, and later, religion and law.
more...

Print

Presidents at War


Michael Beschloss, one of our country?s best presidential historians, labored longer than he expected in writing this large book, Presidents of War. Carefully researched biographies present Presidents with their full human virtues and shortcomings.

Presidents of War was begun 10 years ago, long before our current president, who alarms us with his whim-inspired forays into global events. Beschloss only addresses the dilemma of President Trump in his Epilogue, and gives us t more...

Print

Rogues? Gallery for Impeachment


Retired Admiral William McRaven, a man of sterling character, has been making the rounds of interviews to talk about his book, Sea Stories. He has said that the greatest danger that America faces is not the attacks of Russia or China, but the rhetoric of President Trump. Presidents, he said, will come and go, but our institutions remain, the bulwark of our democracy.

From President Thomas Jefferson until now (except for Nixon), presidents have supported the free press as e more...

Print

The Abortion Hypocrisy


No one should force a pregnant woman to have an abortion, a practice in China years ago to address population explosion (the one-child policy). But forcing a pregnant woman to bear an unwanted child is "involuntary servitude." The key concept here is force. If men and women in a modern society are legally equal citizens, how is it that the radical branch of the Republican Party has been relentlessly trying to eliminate the 1973 law that permits women to make decisions about their own bod more...

Print

The Late, Great Republican Party


If our first president, George Washington, had his way, we would not have had political parties. He disliked "factions," and preferred honorable men having honorable discussions until consensus would result.

This was not to be. From the first, there was such division among the 13 states that the emergence of parties was inevitable. Happily, only two parties arose, sparing us the nightmare of so many other examples in Europe of unstable multiple parties. The two parties wer more...

Print

December 2018

Scuttling All the US Government Departments


The US government is a very big bureaucracy, which to some critics is a bad thing. Howeve, each department under the Administration has been established by Congress to provide essential services. They all do the work that keeps us the most productive, enviable country in the world.

When a new president comes into office, he goes through the transition process, learning what each government agency or department does, its budget, and over all, how government works.
more...

Print

The Final Gift of President Bush

We have all become so numbed by the constant flood of nastiness in our current politics that President George Herbert Walker Bush, our 41st president, even in dying, has given the country his final gift. His graceful death at 94 has been accompanied by memorials to his life of service and his astonishing competence as a one-term president. His passing even shamed President Trump to do what he rarely does: praise the life of this remarkable man, whom he trashed throughout his run for the 2016 pre more...

Print

Attacks on the Press are now global.



Throughout history, the legitimacy of rulers had nothing to do with behavior, but with bloodline or conquest. Kings and emperors ruled, sometimes with the guidance of counselors, but more often with no overt opposition. There was opposition, of course, but clandestine, coming from rivals for the throne or (rarely) from public outrage.

We must consult folk tales to glimpse how ordinary people might have felt about their rulers. Many tales talk about evil rulers, wh more...

Print

September 2018

The Me Too Movement in Perspective

As our political world is once more roiled by allegations of abuse of women, this time a woman who has come forth (obviously reluctantly) with an account of an attempted rape by a drunk schoolboy when the two of them were teens. She was 15 and he 17, but that boy is now a man, a judge, President Trump?s nominee for the Supreme Court.

If this were the only question about this nominee, Brett Kavanaugh?s behavior, it could well be dismissed as an example of "boys will be boys," and t more...

Print

The Assault on Truth

Human beings sometimes lie. How much they deliberately tell an untruth varies according to the nature of their society. Oppressive countries are so punitive that people need to lie to survive. However, if a society is to function at all, there needs to be a set body of facts that are recognized as real. We are living at a time that such agreement on facts is being challenged from all sides, not just from our unusual president, who has recently told veterans at a rally "don?t believe what you see more...

Print

In a Democracy, Character Matters.


This column is not just launching an attack on President Trump, although his character does matter. Rather, it explores the overall issue of good character and the role it plays in the survival of a democracy. Since John F. Kennedy's influential book Profiles in Courage, there has been little attention to what good character is and how essential it is in keeping us a good country.

Good character could be defined as behavior that promotes "doing the right thing," even when more...

Print

Our Better Angels



Abraham Lincoln in his first Inaugural Address, on Monday, March 4, 1861, delivered a speech as he was sworn in to office. His election created a huge crisis in which the Southern States created a Confederacy, a rival nation, and declared war. The issue was supposedly "States' Rights," but the rights that the Confederacy demanded were the rights of White people to enslave Black people.

From its beginnings, the United States wrestled with this issue. How could we be more...

Print

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel?s Capital


I try to be a political centrist, and have done so for both Democratic and Republican presidents---until now. The Trump administration?s foreign policy has mostly made me wince, but a couple of ideas have possibilities: the Jerusalem issue and changing our immigration laws from family reunion to useful skills.

The initiatives that trouble me are those which only cancel the initiatives of former presidents, such as the Pacific Trade Agreement and the Iranian Agreement. Pre more...

Print

December 2017

Can There Be a Centrist Party?

The political pendulum in this country has now swung to two extremes, making it very difficult for a sensible person to select a party that is a big, tolerant tent. Once long ago, the Republicans were such a party and for the same length of time, the Democrats were also a big tent. Today, both parties are struggling for survival and both are being deserted by people in the sensible middle.

A good friend of mine, has stated the problem well:
"Centrist? God, I hope so. The ex more...

Print

Can There Be a Centrist Party?

The political pendulum in this country has now swung to two extremes, making it very difficult for a sensible person to select a party that is a big, tolerant tent. Once long ago, the Republicans were such a party and for the same length of time, the Democrats were also a big tent. Today, both parties are struggling for survival and both are being deserted by people in the sensible middle.

A good friend of mine, has stated the problem well:
"Centrist? God, I hope so. The ex more...

Print

Democracy Cannot Have One Hand Clapping!


When our country was being created, our first president, George Washington, tried to avoid having political parties. He saw that as factions, something that created many problems in old Europe. However, political parties were inevitable. Great minds may agree to disagree on matters of policy, yet do so using the democratic principle of voting.

The first parties were represented by Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic Republican (ancestor of the Democrats) and John Adams represe more...

Print

July 2017

Liberal or Illiberal Democracies, What Are They?


My vigilant husband has called my attention to my use of the term "Liberal Democracy." Many readers, even when college educated, are not familiar with that term. The word "liberal" suggests a political position, such as left-leaning. So in this column, and in future ones, when I use the term Liberal Democracy, I will spell out what it really means.

Liberal in this case means Liberty, or freedom. That freedom is provided by a division of power in the government (President, more...

Print

America Has 250 Years of Consistent Foreign Policy


The majority of Americans, furious over the Assad regime using poison gas on his own Syrian people, expressed approval of President Trump?s attack on the Syrian airfield that launched the gas attack. When one sees such horrors, such as when American soldiers first entered the Nazi death camps, the desire for revenge is powerful. But knee-jerk revenge is not policy. What is American policy about assaults on helpless civilians? Do we have a consistent policy? Do we always react by punishin more...

Print

Closing the American Great Divide


Americans were the closest to being united by a common culture between 1941 and 1965. The post-World War II economy produced an enormous middle class, thanks to being the only country in the world not damaged or destroyed by the war. Manufacturing of everything was flourishing, as were exports and generous support with money and values to the recovery of our former customers and new allies. The only cloud on the horizon was the Cold War and the not small concern about nuclear holocaust s more...

Print

August 2016

Russia's Long Romance with Lying and Deception

A spotlight has been turned on Putin's Russia lately: the probability that his government had hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee, sitting on them until being released the eve of the Democratic Presidential Convention. Their agent, Julian Asange, the creator of WikiLeaks, a hacking underworld that only hacks the computers of the West, never Russia or China, dumped these e-mails with the seeming intent of assisting the election of Donald Trump. Russia certainly could not ope more...

Print

Why the EU is not like the US: The BREXIT Surprise

European nationalism did not die when the EU was born. Climbing out of the ashes of Europe?s second massively destructive war in the 20th century, a group of educated idealists formed the first attempt at economic integration of the European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s. This grew to integrating more European nations into an Economic Community from 1958-1992. The EC added more European countries to this community, which then became the European Union, an actual attempt to create a "Unit more...

Print

It Ain't Necessarily So.

Summertime is here, and I find myself humming the song: "It ain't necessarily so." There are some stupid beliefs out there. As a devout centrist, I may make many of my readers unhappy today. But, I suspect there are many more who share my political position: in the thinking middle.

Left-Wing Baloney
? Black Lives Matter. Believers focus on how many police shootings of Black perpetrators there are. However 6,000 blacks are murdered each year, six times the rate of whites ad more...

Print

Political Parties Are Not Permanent.

That the Republican Party is heading toward a demolition is no surprise by now. This is not the first time a major American political party fell apart. In the 19th century, between the 1830s and 1860, the Whig Party was the political rival to Jefferson?s Democratic Republican (Democrat) Party. The Whigs ran candidates every election, but elected only two to the presidency.

Political parties are not cast in stone; they change over time. The Jeffersonian Democrats began as an elite more...

Print