Two St. Patrick’s Days ago, I was going to write about Gangs of New York, having just seen the film for the first time. Its dramatization of the Irish American immigrant experience percolated in my brain, in combination with contemporary political developments. …

A group of Americans are standing around, waiting for a business deal to take place. As they wait, they begin to grumble about the state of the economy, including their taxes. One of them asks an elderly man whether he thinks the taxes are too high. He replies that yes…

If only Hank Aaron were still alive. When he died earlier this year, it was a loss not only for baseball, but for the United States of America. Courageously persevering through decades of racist abuse, including death threats as he closed in on Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, he…

Today, the most important military alliance in the world turns 72. After four decades of defending Western Europe against the Soviet threat, in the 1990s NATO halted and rolled back some of Europe’s worst atrocities since the Holocaust. After 9/11 brought the alliance into missions far from its normal sphere…

In at least one sense, the U.S. airstrike in Syria on February 25, targeting Iranian-backed militants who have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq, is not really related to events in August 2013. President Biden, in ordering the strike, was reacting in a quite natural way for an American president when…

It is well-established that John F. Kennedy’s victory in the West Virginia Democratic primary (sixty years ago today) was vital to his becoming president. Without a strong showing in an overwhelmingly Protestant state, his campaign may very well have sunk under the weight of the candidate’s Roman Catholicism. By tackling…

Highly educated and well educated are not the same thing. It is easy to forget, at a time when a college degree is a requirement (formal or not) for most positions of power and influence, that going to college and getting good grades does not necessarily equip people to lead…

I’m not a believer in fate or karma. The idea that everything that happens to a person is bound to happen that way, or is the result of something that person did at some earlier time, strikes me as too deterministic. Serendipity, on the other hand, is something I can…