Virtue: The Missing Enabler of the Republic
“A republic, if you can keep it.” Benjamin Franklin. The blog builds on several others on virtue: Virtue, Wherefore Art Thou? Virtue: honor and Integrity Virtue Leadership and Power Virtue and Courtesy are Requirements for Effective Solution Development and…
Communism’s Dirty Secret (and Capitalism’s and Democracy’s as Well)
Communism is a utopian philosophy, summed up by the quote from Karl Marx in the figure above. Communism’s secret is that it requires virtue to implement. Its dirty secret is that communism does not teach, induce, or want virtue.…
Virtue and Courtesy
A Solutions-Based Approach To Social Justice ended with a brief discussion of the need for virtue and courtesy to promote an effective dialog and discourse for solutions. This blog will discuss these two concepts and develop them as integral…
Key Events and People Driving the American Revolution
This short piece fills in the gaps tradition education, even when it teaches the founding of the American Republic, leaves out the buildup to the revolution. It is important because the revolution is based on the cultural and philosophical concepts…
Educating Citizens versus Sheep, Part 4: Education Framework
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana I developed this framework during Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series and work I did earlier on serious games. If government funds…
Educating Sheep Versus Citizens: Part 1
This blog series will develop a conceptual framework to assess how effectively schools prepare graduates for their responsibilities as citizens in a free republic. This first part will look at an overall framework that compares educating sheep versus educating…
The Constitution and the Soldier
Every member of the US Armed Forces takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But as the Annenberg survey (Annenberg 2024, Annenberg 2023 ) reports, many Americans have…
Comparative Politics and Political Change: what Works and Why?
“A Republic, if you can keep it.” Bejamin Franklin. When I was in graduate school, I took a course on comparative political systems. The course readings seemed to favor the parliamentary system, and I took a bit of an…
Politics and Candidate Types
Remember back to the distant past of 1991? The US had just won the Gulf War and President George H. W. Bush was riding high and looked unbeatable. None of the leading Democrats wanted to run against him and risk…
Our Atavistic Fears
When I sit in my garden office, I often smile at the squirrels, rabbits, and birds as they move about eating and socializing. But on the times that I see the local black snake, I cringe a bit. Now,…
