Current Events

America is an achievement unequalled in history. We planted the seeds of freedom, individual rights, and individualism in 1776 that had not existed in the history of mankind to the degree that we have today.[1] Our tree of freedom is not yet mature. Some major branches of the tree are the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Although America has weathered many storms such as the Civil War, it is still struggling against the onslaughts of various forms of collectivism. Whether the tree of freedom reaches full maturity is still an open question. Introduction to the context of America’s …

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Why individualism and collectivism Many current issues in America are concerned with or are a result of conflicts between individualism and collectivism, as the country is a mixture of both. So, it is important to have an understanding of the two concepts. A country’s politics and government follow from a country’s predominant ethics, or morality. If a country’s ethics are primarily oriented toward individualism, then the resulting government will also be primarily oriented toward individualism and the recognition and protection of individual rights. If a country’s ethics are primarily collectivist in nature, then so will be its government, which will override and violate individual rights in the name of the …

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What is the 1619 Project? The 1619 Project is a long-form journalism project developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writers from The New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine. Its premise is that the central and defining feature of American history and culture is racism. [1, 2] It is a comrade-in-arms to Critical Race Theory. Quoting from the preface to the 100-page collection of articles indicates the magnitude of its (incredulous) claims. Fasten your seat belt. “It [1619] is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that …

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My first summer job as a teenager in high school paid 50 cents an hour. The federal minimum wage at that time was 75 cents an hour. My job involved helping to convert an old house into efficiency apartments, and I learned many skills – carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting, laying tile, cement, and lots of cleaning. Some of my high school buddies worked for the highway department at 75 cents an hour painting highway guardrails. My pay was fine with me, because I was learning a lot of skills that have proved very useful as an adult, and besides, I didn’t want to work painting in the blazing sun. Was …

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Most of us get continuing appeals to “give back” to charity or to the community with the implication that it’s our moral obligation to do so, and if we don’t, somehow we are unsupportive of humanity in general, and our neighbors in particular and should feel guilty about abstaining. The concept “give back” means that I am returning something that does not belong to me – that what I have received I did not earn and that I am merely returning it to its rightful owner. I earned what I have On a personal note, my partner and I used to have our own business. We prided ourselves on providing …

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To even imagine that we should abolish public education is very controversial and almost unthinkable, as compulsory public education in America has been around in one form or another since the 1600s and has acquired an almost religious and untouchable aura. But we need to consider the following vignettes as a context for a discussion of public schools. What is happening here? What is going wrong with public education? What is Public Education? By “public” education we mean “government” education for those adjectives are one and the same. And to carry these terms to their logical conclusion, we could use the word “political” because requiring school attendance, deciding what is …

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