“Father”
In the Year of the Dragon The Lion fell: Exhausted, confused, Lost in the thickening mist of age and pain, His brittle claws still deep in the flesh of his prey, His iron, toothless jaw still clamped on Life’s throat. […]
“Judas”: A Monologue in Two Voices and Three Parts
I. Who is there? No one. Do I know you? Do you? Don’t answer my question with a question! Who are you? A friend. I have had enough of friends. I think you have had enough of many things. Who are you? That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I have come to offer [...]
“The Sun at Midnight”
Each day a little further into the mist she seeps, Each night more tightly she clings to the real. The fog enfolds, ensnares, envelops: Like a besieged city she remains steadfast and forlorn. […]
“You”
I love you with every breath. I inhale and you fill me with fire; I exhale and am emptied of pain. I love you when I look up through the sky, I love you when I look down toward the earth. I am more in love with you each day. […]
“Parthia Delenda Est”: John Bolton’s War in the Middle East
National Security Advisor John Bolton has thus far failed to maneuver the world into yet another Made-in-America Middle East conflict. Yet he might soon have the justification he wants. In the American lexicon there is never any such thing as wars of aggression. We prefer calling them wars of liberation. This has not been a [...]
The Sri Lanka Church Bombings: The Saudi Pestilence Spreads
The history of Sri Lanka through the Fifties to the present time is a sobering reminder to those who fail to see that unrestrained democracy can lead to the tyranny of the majority and that robust diversity is as often a cause of friction and strife as it is a strength to be celebrated. If [...]
Good Friday, Good Bureaucrats, and the Good Roman
On this Good Friday, as we ponder the suffering Christ endured, we should not forget the pivotal role of that good and decent bureaucrat Pilate in facilitating that crime. Nor forget the bureaucratic crimes committed daily on the sacrificial altars of obedience and expedience. Thus spoke Nietzsche: “Must I add that, in the whole New [...]
Hostages to Fortune
I regretted having children because children fundamentally altered my entire life in a way I never expected they would. For literally the first time in my life I was afraid of the future and unsure of what would happen next. I had willfully, foolishly, unthinkingly, given hostages to fortune. It was just the two of [...]
A Dangerous Conflation of Terms: “Anti-Israel” and “Anti-Semitic”
Those who make too much of Representative Ilhan Omar’s statement, and who are happy to gain some short-term win by conflating legitimate concern over Israeli influence with anti-Semitism, run the risk of permanently connecting the two terms... I was sitting under a huge oak tree on my college campus reading a political science textbook when [...]
The Wall: Echoes of a Distant Empire
How often have we not seen, even in our own lives, that actions we take to preserve something we cherish end up destroying that which we seek to protect? Patriotism may be the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the desire for security and the yearning for justice are forever the final refuge of tyrants. [...]
A Postcard From Venice
I had always thought it nonsense to believe in love at first sight. But that sophomoric conceit sank with that setting sun over the Venetian church spires that summer day in 1973. And with it was washed away that companion conceit that falling in love was something that could only happen between two humans… The [...]
Giving Good Things a Bad Name
President Trump has an uncanny knack for energizing his supporters and riling his adversaries, but to have a lasting positive impact on American society he will need to find a way to inspire a majority of the American people... Like most first-time visitors, I rambled as if in a trance through the temple complex at [...]
One Month and Counting: The Government Shutdown
My concern was that once the shutdown began, it would be difficult to end it just as it is difficult to prevent a needless bloodbath once blood begins to spill. What most of the public—including most of my former colleagues in government service—don’t seem to understand is that this shutdown is unlike all those that [...]
Illiberal Lessons Learned Along the Way
I keep reminding myself to look beneath and beyond labels and remain focused on the individual. Because ultimately it is the individual who matters most and who is most deserving of praise or condemnation, affection or disdain. It is a surprisingly hard lesson to learn and to remember given the current political and cultural tensions [...]