A life in words

  • Depolarization as a spiritual path

    I have studied and decried political polarization in the United States for many years. Congress, which should be the key site for synthesizing disparate viewpoints from across the country, is instead largely following trends established by rival media echo-chambers. The polarization is materially impairing our ability to govern ourselves effectively. These competing media worlds have…

  • Separation of race and state: a response to Coleman Hughes and Jamelle Bouie

    The most delicious thing in the world is a good discussion of a critical issue. That’s what we got in Open to Debate’s conversation between Coleman Hughes and Jamelle Bouie on the topic of color-blindness with regard to race. It was a great debate. I think Jamelle was most effective in pointing out that civil…

  • Conversation with a pacifist

    Conversation with a pacifist

    The city I was born in (Richland, Washington) was created by the federal government as part of the effort to synthesize the plutonium used in the Fat Man bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. As such I feel not responsible for, but somehow tangled up in, the legacy of that development, especially since reading Black Rain by…

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.John Adams, Thoughts on Government, April 1776