Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death reveals two things once more, that Americans know are true: America’s brokenness and (tacitly) the inadequacy of the United States Constitution. The latter, though it reminds us that neither the framers nor the document were perfect, has long since warranted reform. The former (America’s brokenness) is due, more to the…
In her excellent and justifiably best-selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age of Colorblindness, (The New Press, NY 2012) Michelle Alexander argues and substantiates that “racism is highly adaptable” (p.21ff). Establishing that America has always had a system where the white race sought to control first the American Indians and then…
by Michael P. Friday Christians can be often heard to say, “Never mind, God is still in charge.” This comment is usually and especially uttered in a situation where there prevails a seemingly insurmountable wave of badness, crime, wickedness, or incredible abuse of power, or where person or persons, utilizing dishonesty, lawlessness or injustice,…
Evan Osnos, a New Yorker staff writer, opined in a recent TV appearance that a “religion of growth” pervades Facebook, preventing its founder Mark Zuckerberg from taking responsibility to thoroughly rid Facebook of its fake news, and its susceptibility to destabilize America’s electoral integrity and democracy. That “religion” pursues user growth at any cost, promoting…
I had been an immigrant merely 5 months that fateful Tuesday morning when 19 wicked men flew two airliners into the majestic twin towers on Manhattan Island, one into the Pentagon, and yet another, forced into the ground by heroes, in Shanksville, PA. The mayhem, shock, sadness, and disbelief of that surreal day were superseded…
You know it’s a different kind of silly season when I, a person ordained to the Christian ministry (otherwise called a “man of the cloth”), am about to rise to the defense of a former porn star. But it is a defense more akin to Jesus’s defense of a woman brought to him, caught in…
Let’s go where the wisest of leaders fear to tread: the number of homicides and suicides that occur in America today, and their relationship to guns. And let us go there in the context of leadership, rather than in politics. First, two fundamentals about responsible leadership: Responsible leadership is informed leadership; and informed leadership is…
Few people would disagree that there exists, in a few key strata of life, a crisis of leadership. The securing of peace in various parts of the world is not only elusive, but in some significant areas, it appears to have taken several steps backward. True and honorable leadership is never about serving self. Responsible…
Even though empowerment is both desirable and necessary for effective leadership and organizational health, it is often not employed by some leaders. The barriers to empowerment must therefore be overcome and removed. Roger Gill asserts that “barriers to empowerment include bureaucracy, risk aversion, the need for control over others, fear of a loss of control,…
Barbara Kellerman observes that “there’s something odd about the idea that somehow leadership can be distinguished from coercion, as if leadership and power were unrelated.”[1] I take issue with her actual statement, but not with its implication. Despite the position some may take, that coercion can sometimes be necessary, (as with a college football coach wanting a…