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Most practical protest

Spring is filled with dreams of locally grown food. Last weekend, my family volunteered for our local community garden, helping get beds ready and putting tomato and pepper plants in the ground. At home, we planted zinnias and sunflowers. My family also signed up for shares of Community Supported Agriculture from our local farmer. I love this time of year. Getting our hands in dirt reminds us where our food comes from and that we need to take care of the Earth. Our food is only as good as the soil we grow it in, and to have healthy soil, we must treat the Earth well in ...

Gerrymandering is as old as republic

For almost a year now, America's two parties have been engaged in a mass congressional redistricting battle royale. The fun kicked off in Texas last July, when Gov. Greg Abbott, following President Donald Trump's urging, first pushed the Texas Legislature to redistrict the Lone Star State's congressional maps in a pro-Republican direction. Missouri and North Carolina soon followed, prompting California Gov. Gavin Newsom to get in on the action: Golden State voters approved the use of a new map at the ballot box last November. On April 21, Virginia voters narrowly approved a new ...

When does speech become dangerous?

Americans love arguing about free speech. We invoke the First Amendment as a kind of political force field: You can say whatever you want, whenever you want, without consequence. But the First Amendment only restricts government action. It does not guarantee you a career, a platform or immunity from backlash. The real question is not whether certain speech is legal but rather what kind of speech deserves social consequences — and what kind doesn't. And if we're talking about reckless political speech, we should talk about Jimmy Kimmel. Years ago, he abandoned comedy in ...

Do we know our enemy?

President Trump canceled a delegation of U.S. negotiators about to head to Islamabad for continued negotiations with Iran because it appeared no one from the Iranian regime planned to show up. It's past time to consider whether the American side truly knows the goals of the Iranian side. Such knowledge is key to success. In his often quoted "The Art of War," Sun Tzu wrote: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the ...

Changing minds, one millimeter at a time

I've just passed the three-year mark of writing this column. Every week. For three years. Over 120,000 words, enough for one long novel or two short ones. Why do it, anyway? It seems appropriate on the third anniversary of the column to come up with three reasons. First: Before turning to column-writing, I had five published novels. I wrote them in no small part to escape the violent, unjust world we live in and hang out in a fictional world where I had some control over what happened. By 2023, though, anger was boiling inside of me at a world where injustice, poverty, ...

How to think about affordability

"Affordability" is the word grabbing the headlines in public discourse these days. However, if affordability is a problem, it's important to be clear about what exactly the problem is and what can be done. Gallup has new polling data noting that the "high cost of living continues to top Americans' list of the most important financial problems facing their families." Per Gallup's new data, 31% say "high cost of living/inflation" is the most important problem," 13% say energy costs/oil and gas prices, 13% say "cost of owning or renting a home" and 8% say "healthcare ...