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Leadership

Items on leadership and its personal and public implications

Where Were Obama’s Friends?: Friendship under fire: “As for the supersized candidates, what strikes one most about them is their ‘aloneness.’ They look so solitary. Indeed, it is possible that the old and honorable notion of ‘standing with’ a candidate like Obama simply didn’t occur to his famous supporters this week. Everyone has become used to watching celebrity stars and athletes take it in the neck on their own. Even someone running for the nation’s presidency looks like just another personal crack-up.” Makes one pause.  (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal )

Thu 01 May 2008 • Responses: 0 • from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

Jacques Barzun Centennary: Critic and essayist Jacques Barzun turned 100 this September: “Barzun may be the very exemplar of the enlightened and humble humanist, and he long ago cut down to the core of the greatest difficulty in modern schooling: if we want young people to be humanized by the knowledge they acquire, they must be taught by humanists—that is, by those who themselves have been humanized by that same knowledge, who have been, in a word, changed, and changed for the better, by what they know.” (Tracy Lee Simmons, The University Bookman )

Mon 26 Nov 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

British business leaders are now as spineless as American ones: “Businesses have a moral responsibility to use the power of their investments not only to make money but also to improve matters globally. That is the whole point of their signing up to statements and organisations such as the UN’s Global Compact or participating in exalted events such as the World Economic Forum. If businessmen and businesswomen don’t want to entirely discredit such organisations and institutions, the least they can do is to keep quiet rather than openly show that they are prepared to sacrifice liberty, law, and principle for the sake of profit.” (Prabhu Guptara, Renaissance blog )

Tue 12 Jun 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Browne and I were brought down by fear and hubris: “I am the last person in the world to lecture Lord Browne. But it does not take a genius to identify the similarities between our two disasters - fear and hubris.” (Jonathan Aitken, The Guardian )

Mon 07 May 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Christ, My Bodhisattva: Multinational businessman and politician Ram Gidoomal talks about ‘translating’ the gospel in today’s world: “Business is a uniquely global endeavor. Just on Sunday, I was preaching at my local church and a guy in the congregation came up to me and said, “I’m a New Zealander, I’m working in a salmon business in Chile, and I’m here [in London] just for today, on my way to Norway to see the business owners.” There’s no other field that so closely matches the global nature of God’s mission.” (Christianity Today )

Fri 27 Apr 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

Any shade of politics you like, so long as it’s green: This is an excellent piece demonstrating the power of a coherent worldview to properly appreciate and critique the wider cultural setting; Hume is apparently a Marxist, but I would hope soon to see a similar depth of thinking from a Christian thinker. Bracket, if you must, the argument, and consider the level of critique. “The adoption of these attitudes across the political class represents something far more important than the cynical tax grab which some critics have claimed it all is. The crusade against manmade global warming is underpinned by a much broader loss of faith in our manmade society and its once-proud accomplishments, from industrialised farming to flying the world. You only had to listen to Cameron, supposedly the great white hope of UK politics, sounding off this week about how many species are threatened with extinction ‘because of mankind’s relentless grab for the finite resources of our shared home’ to realise how mainstream mankind-bashing has now become.” (Mick Hume, Spiked Online)

Fri 16 Mar 2007 from Peter Edman • Link & Comments

The man who ‘murdered’ slavery: Includes a review of the Metaxas book on Wilberforce and an excellent assessment of Wilberforce's accomplishments and their lessons for today. “It is amazing to read a letter from Wilberforce and realize that he is, in fact, articulating precisely 220 years ago what New Yorkers came to know in the nineties as the 'broken windows' theory: 'The most effectual way to prevent greater crimes is by punishing the smaller.'” (Mark Steyn, Macleans)

Mon 12 Mar 2007 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments

The Church’s Great Malfunctions: “He was a ‘good Christian man,’ he even taught Sunday school, and yet he ended up presiding over one of the worst business frauds in history, involving thousands of people and billions of dollars. I could be referring to any number of executives in the business-page headlines of the past several years, from Enron to WorldCom and beyond. Why didn't their faith prevent their crimes? I suspect at least three factors were at work in their faith's spectacular failure.” (Miroslav Volf, Christian Vision Project, Christianity Today)

Thu 16 Nov 2006 from TTF Staff • Link & Comments