But…what if we can’t keep it?  What if our Republic is destroyed?   Do we have a Plan B? It never seriously occurred to me that perhaps we couldn’t keep it.  I was only four years old when I read “Ben and Me”, a charming little biography of Benjamin Franklin for children, ostensibly written by his pet mouse Amos.  Ever since, I have carried with me Franklin’s famous statement naming the new form of government the Founders had created—a Republic—and his warning of its vulnerability.  But all...

Most of us who messed up when we were teenagers didn’t wind up in prison.  Instead, we went on to   learn how to make a living, prepare for a career, make connections, find a job, be coached by a mentor, balance risks and rewards, maybe fall in love and create a stable family life among supportive friends and neighbors. But those who did become incarcerated spent months or years going nowhere.  They spent soul-crushing days at menial, repetitive, distasteful tasks with maybe a few hours for...

Call me crazy, call me naïve.  But why not hope that bad news could trigger a good result?   A staggering 42,000,000 Americans struggle to put food on the table every day. So in more civil days, we rallied with a safety net.  SNAP and other support programs were put in place during times when care for our suffering neighbors seemed normal.  But these merciful provisions—and even their emergency backups—are being sabotaged by ruthless members of an administration hostile to caring and...