Love Humans or Love Humanity Plus
Things go bad fast. In his book Intellectuals, historian Paul Johnson offered a pejorative definition of intellectuals. He said a certain type of intellectual is a person who loves their ideas more than people.
February 2021
May 2020
The Example of Winston Churchill
"Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill There is a peculiar sort of beauty in the examples set by men and women who held firm in the face of overwhelming evil. Eighty years ago this month, the world was brought to the brink [...]
March 2020
Sacrificing Self for the Good of Others
Acts of self-sacrifice deeply touch the human heart in a way nothing else does. The movie Act of Valor gave us a vivid representation of the ultimate sacrifice. As three soldiers enter a building near the Mexican border, a grenade is thrown into a room among them. Seeing no time to get out of the [...]
February 2020
That Others May Live: What The Last Full Measure can teach us
War films have a habit of breaking through our moral apathy and cynicism by bringing us face to face with the darkest parts of history that people have lived through, and how good men answer the evil they confront. The recent Vietnam war film The Last Full Measure is no exception. It tells the true [...]
November 2019
A Good Neighbor We Just Can’t Forget
A long time ago, I attended a lecture about legacy from a gentleman at a planned giving function. The speaker asked everyone in the room to stand up. Then he said, “Remain standing if you remember the first middle and last names of both of your parents.” No one sat down. He continued, “Now, remain [...]