Character and Ethics
Items on personal character and public action
Steep Trajectory
Wed 07 May 2008 by Al Sikes
Free Lunch Writ Large
We are deep in the blame game over the housing bubble, writes Al Sikes. Mortgage brokers, banks, rating agencies, property flippers, and regulators have all made the list. Perhaps somebody should go upstream in a search for the real culprit.
China, Tibet, and the Olympics
Mon 05 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman
Placing the Olympics above world politics is a valiant but vain hope.
When the French nobleman and historian Baron Philipe de Coubertin revived the idea of the Olympic Games in Paris in 1894, he was motivated by both nationalism and idealistic internationalism. He felt the French had lost their war with Prussia in 1870 because of their poor physical conditioning. But de Coubertin had also been inspired by an English physician, botanist, and magistrate, William Penny Brookes. Another eccentric idealist and philanthropist, Brookes had first organized an “Olympian Games” in 1850 in the English rural village of Much Wenlock, Shropshire. De Coubertin visited the Much Wenlock Olympics in 1890, and returned to France inspired.
Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments
Sun 27 Apr 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman
The rigors of the campaign lead to what may be a landmark moment.
Every presidential campaign cycle has its landmark moments. Television viewers watching the debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy were shocked by how unattractive Nixon’s five-o’clock shadow appeared. He lost the debate on television, even though those who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon had scored more points. Then there was the moment when Ronald Reagan seized the microphone during a 1980 Republican primary debate in New Hampshire and announced that he had “paid” for the microphone and was going to hold onto it. And who can forget Michael Dukakis, George Bush’s opponent in the 1988 election, trying, by driving a tank on camera, to look manly and in-charge and to demonstrate he was commander-in-chief material? Unfortunately, he simply looked absurd.
Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright
Tue 01 Apr 2008 • Responses: 0 • by David Aikman
By many observers’ reckoning, Senator Barack Obama’s major speech on race in the U.S. at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center March 18 was one of the rhetorical highlights of the 2008 presidential election season. Obama’s 5,000-word address was skillfully crafted, eloquent, and a powerful attempt to bring balance—and the views of both blacks and whites—into discussion of “America’s original sin” of racial injustice over the centuries. As the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya (which raises the question why people of mixed race with one black parent and one white parent are almost always deemed to be black and not white), Obama is certainly in a good position to shed light on this often poorly illustrated topic.
A Life Worth Emulating
Fri 07 Mar 2008 by Luder G. Whitlock, Jr.
John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, by Jonathan Aitken (Crossway, 2007), 400pp., $22.
Jonathan Aitken, a skilled biographer and author of the award-winning Nixon: A Life and, more recently, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed, has produced a valuable biography of John Newton illumined by important, unpublished letters and diary entries. He embellishes a compelling narrative by inserting thoughtful assessments of Newton’s life and ministry at appropriate points.
A flurry of books, articles, and films about William Wilberforce have been published recently in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Appropriately so, for in addition to his pivotal role in Parliament leading to decisive action against the slave trade, Wilberforce was an extraordinary figure of great influence in England.
Political Democracy at Its Most Interesting
Thu 14 Feb 2008 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Can anyone recall a presidential election in the U.S. more interesting than the current one? I can’t. In the more than four decades since I moved to the U.S. (initially not being qualified to vote), I’ve encountered everything from apathy to zealotry, with cynicism and despair in good measure in between. But I never can recall the degree of excitement that has been elicited among voters, especially by Barack Obama.
When I was in graduate school in the late 1960s, I was taken aback by the dismay of most college undergraduates in 1968 that Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, was running against Richard Nixon. Nixon? Many young people in the 1960s would rather gag than pronounce that word. American intellectuals since that time have developed a cottage industry of running down the quality of American politicians. But they have no case to make in 2008.
The Rise of Political Hatred
Mon 04 Feb 2008 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
An article in the Wall Street Journal last November by Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, had a disturbing observation. After he had carefully explained to a group of politically liberal academics whom he was hosting for dinner that he was dismayed by the vitriolic hatred expressed in attacks upon President Bush, he was harangued by several of the guests. According to Berkowitz, one guest responded in a loud, seething, in-your-face voice, “What’s irrational about hating George W. Bush?”
Losing Touch with a Friend
Thu 03 Jan 2008 • Responses: 1 • by Peter Sanlon
Do we need God to experience true friendship?
In a tedious meeting I noticed the blinking light on my BlackBerry. Disinterestedly I glanced at the e-mail that had landed in my inbox—the sender’s name evoked memories. Years had passed; we had vacationed together, shared meals, talked of hopes and fears. The e-mail was from a friend I lost touch with. Last I had heard from him he was heading to college, excited but slightly fearful of what the future might hold. It was a joy to discover that he has since graduated and established his own art business, selling his work via the internet.
Cicero asked himself what the most important thing in life is, concluding that, “Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is friendship.”
The Elusive Goal of Mastery
Tue 11 Dec 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
The Shadow Side of Technological Control
Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay recently had a friend die of cancer. It got him to pondering again about the implications of our ever-expanding control of our bodies and our world. In this essay, originally presented at an October meeting of the Trinity Forum’s Senior Fellows, he looks at the inescapable ironies of our quest for control. Progress is good, right? Longer lives and less suffering is good, right? Sure. But all treatments have side effects and every advance has unintended consequences.
Attention Deficit Disorder
Wed 21 Nov 2007 • Responses: 10 • by Fred Harburg
The blinding pace of our world makes it tempting to split the signal rather than to give our full attention to the people with whom we are engaged at any given moment.
Increasingly common stories of traffic accidents involving people “texting” while driving add poignancy to the epidemic of fractured attention in our world. There is a presumption that multitasking is a necessary, even admirable skill in our hyper-speed age, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
As an Air Force instructor pilot one of the first myths I had to dispel for aspiring young pilot candidates was the idea that good pilots are multitaskers. Research supports a different conclusion. The best pilots are excellent at rapid sequencing. They give full and complete attention to a visual indication, an aural signal, or a kinesthetic sensation, interpret it accurately, act on it effectively, and then move to the next appropriate point of focus. Scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center conclude that attempting to split attention is deadly for a pilot.
