Every semester I ask my first year college students: How many of you expect to earn more than $100,000 per year; every semester almost every student r...
In a shocking discovery, an international team of biologists, led by the famous Dr. Gibbons, a renowned Dutch geneticist, have discovered a unique 'Am...
While, on one level, Elizabeth Warren's speech was the classic kind of post-tragedy speech you would expect from a politician who represents the place the terrible events happened, full of praise for the courage and resolve of her home state's people, she did something more.
The term American exceptionalism and its meaning have evolved over many generations. What it may have meant in the past is not important, what it has come to mean today though, threatens to cripple our future.
It is my right to exercise free speech and it is the government's duty to uphold that right. So, what are my minimum duties as an American to my government, my nation, and my fellow citizens, and how do I know those are my duties?
Many among the staunchest supporters of gun rights believe that armed patriots might have to rise up against the federal government in the future -- not tomorrow, maybe not a decade, but someday.
Until the government haters get specific, name the programs they want to get rid of, and find a majority of Americans who agree with them, things will remain pretty much the same.
Our hours are arranged not to be lived, but to be gotten through. We slice them at the neck -- a sacrifice for something we may want to buy.
Barack Obama's supporters understandably feel uplifted by his reelection. Chants of "Four more years" have been matched by the hope that Obama will finally be able to complete his agenda during his second term. In reality, the public reelected Obama without giving him the clear means to do so.
The United States is a country of great achievements, deep flaws, and immense potential. To reduce such complexity by painting the country as "exceptional" does a disservice to the memory of the generations of men and women who struggled, and who continue to struggle to make the country what it is.
We Americans love team effort and collective achievement, but we prize individual accomplishment more than perhaps any other people in the world.
Who lost Libya? Indeed, who lost the entire Middle East? Those are the questions lurking behind the endless stream of headlines about "Benghazi-gate." Here's the question we should really ask, though.
Americans take pride in the idea and the reality of America as the exceptional nation, though that exceptionalism is variously defined. What was missing in the debate was a sense of the world as a changed place, with America no longer the sole super power.
Mitt Romney has made the "apology tour" central to his cynical and divisive push to "other" Obama, to define him in some way as "foreign" or not fully American.
We feel the need to fix the world's problems even though most Americans would rather watch baseball or football than hear two candidates thrash out foreign policy. Who out there knows a single fact about Mali, Romney's new trouble spot? How many Americans could locate Yemen on a map?
I realize we live in a secular nation-state, but I am really bothered by how thoroughly un-biblical that way of thinking is. Whether or not it's effective foreign policy from a realpolitik perspective, the Bible calls us to integrity, not strength.
I can think of few better examples of American exceptionalism than the ability to produce genetically-modified flora that will give us the wealth we need to pay for Romney's world order. If we are to take Romney's cue and follow his lead, we better all get our shovels out.
History offers abundant examples of what happens when one state attempts to impose its ways on others.
With Muslim faith and fancy lands and resources under continuous military and media attack for more than a decade, we should not be surprised at their resentment.
While Americans have every right to be as angry and confused as they were on September 12, 2001, they also have the duty to be introspective and measured before acting or speaking, as they never were in the aftermath of 9/11.
Life here has heated up considerably since Chicago's public school teachers declared a strike on the eve of September 9. And it's a startling, painful, dramatic, and yes, magnificent sight to behold.
Mitt Romney's doctrine of American exceptionalism is well known. What most Americans don't understand is the extent to which his Mormon faith informs that conviction.
Thanks to the Republicans' favorite pseudo-historian David Barton, "American exceptionalism," a nineteenth century insult about the undeserved prideful nature of Americans is being proudly touted by Republicans everywhere. The irony is killing me.
We are all created equal in the sight of God. Americans are entitled to worry about themselves, but they are morally obligated as well to empathize with and engage in the affairs of others and to recognize the interdependent nature of our world.
Rightly or wrongly, President Obama believes that being American puts great innovators at a distinct advantage over their counterparts in, say, Kyrgyzstan.
