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"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  

July 2023

Ukraine Reborn (2 of 2)

Ukraine was in the news before most of us knew it was Ukraine. The nuclear disaster of Chernobyl was a Russian disaster, one that probably added to the pileup of bad governance that finally brought down the Soviet Union.

The first good leader that Russia had since Khrushchev (he revealed the horrors of Stalin and helped save the world from a nuclear war with the US) was Gorbachev, who unfortunately took the blame over the collapse of the USSR. He never had enough time to carry out more...

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October 2020

What Is a Patriot?

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has brought to mind what a real patriot is. We also know what is isn?t: the bully in the White House whose notion of patriotism is physically hugging a flag while smirking at his fans and trashing its institutions.

Patriotism walks on a tightrope. It can mean "my country right or wrong" or "making this a more perfect union." President Lincoln reminded us that we should listen to our "better angels" if we love our country. Real patriotism i more...

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December 2018

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...

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April 2016

Genocide extends back 7,000 years.

Archaeologists have just found a 7,000-year-old Stone Age mass gravesite outside of Frankfurt, Germany! This horrifying find erases what we had always thought about human behavior at the beginnings of agriculture and village life. Genocide has a long human history, but we didn?t know that it was that early in the agricultural revolution when population density could not have been large enough to provide for organized warfare.

This is just one of a number of similar mass graves. T more...

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