At heart of good political discussion: the idea

A year of living verbally with a French roommate’s insistent ‘whys’ suggests how polarized Americans could fill their divide with light  Gig Harbor, Wash. We are, as polls tell us and pundits reinforce, Polarized Nation. En route to the...
Accidental convention delegate gripped by hands-on democracy

Abu Ghraib and the mirror

GIG HARBOR, WASH.—All Americans celebrate the recent Iraqi election—the images of the long lines at polling sites were truly thrilling—and we hope these newcomers to democracy can solidify their historic reality. But there is another set of images and another...

Marching orders from a survivor of Auschwitz

GIG HARBOR, WASH.—In the months since the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was commemorated, a particular survivor of that death camp—a Polish woman named Saba—has occupied my thoughts. These memories come with marching orders. But first, Saba in...
Accidental convention delegate gripped by hands-on democracy

Notes for a moderate’s manifesto

GIG HARBOR, WASH.—”Things fall apart,” poet William Butler Yeats famously wrote, “the centre cannot hold.” Written just after World War I, Yeats’s lines suggest themselves now—with the fourth anniversary of 9/11—when the...