Preserving American Values

Our nation stands under attack … not from without but from within. American values, our politics, and our culture have been corrupted.

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about

Websites: www.westillholdthesetruths.weebly.com; www.preservingamericanvalues.com; www.thepracticalbuddhist.com. A graduate of Brown U. and U. of Chicago Law School, I’ve had a varied career as a legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, management consultant, composer, teacher, and author. I have authored 7 books on topics as varied as Buddhism, child rearing, and politics, the latter of which received a pre-publication endorsement from James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic. My Buddhist blog was selected as one of the top 50 Buddhist blogs on the web.

Category: American Culture

  • The Curse of Specialness

    We have created a culture in which almost everyone is deeply dissatisfied with their lives in one way or another. I’ve written in the past that we all suffer from a deep insecurity which impacts how we feel about ourselves and everything around us. Part of that derives from our early childhood experiences within the…

  • The Responsibility Crisis

    There is a crisis in the United States of a failure to take responsibility for the impact of one’s actions on others. This crisis occurs at all levels … the individual, family, business, government.  Whether this occurs in other part of the world, I cannot say. What lies at the core of this crisis? The…

  • Democrats Must Save America from Self-Destructing

    I have never seen such an apparent deep split in the American people combined with such rage and intolerance towards the other side’s point of view.  This exceeds even the emotions generated by Vietnam.  Indeed, the ubiquitous nature of this rage is possibly worse than anything America has ever encountered. But is what we are seeing and…

  • Yes, Virginia, There Is Hope – The Invisible Majority

    Of all the unfortunate results of the 2016 campaign and election, perhaps the worst is that the divisive identity politics pursued by both parties resulted in a loss of any feeling that we are one people, one country.  Instead, post-election there are two opposing camps at war; so many angry voices, so much vilification on both…

  • Darkness Before Light

    We learn that life is a struggle between the forces of light and darkness.  Buddhism sees the conflict as between your heart and your ego-mind.  In Christianity, it’s between God and the Devil.   Many holy men have taught that there can be no light without darkness, without first suffering you cannot learn how to free yourself from…

  • More Proof That the Problems of Inner Cities Are Not Caused by Black Culture

    In an earlier post of mine, “Urban Ghetto Violence Is Not Caused by a Failure of the Black Community,” I argued that while many, especially Republicans, criticize Blacks for the violence in the urban ghetto community, that causal connection is false.  It is not a function of Black culture.  It is instead the product of poverty and…

  • The Case for Compulsory Language Education for Immigrants

    The functioning of a healthy democracy and society requires that all members of that society feel a part of it.  They can have complaints, arguments, but they need to still feel part of it. There are several things that indicate I believe that we don’t have a healthy democracy at this point in our history. …

  • Capitalism + Technology = Unemployment

    A recent article in The New Yorker, “Rage Against the Machine,” commenting on several recent books about the future of robotic automation, shows clearly the disaster – massive unemployment – that will be created by this technology in the next 10-20 years due to the unending desire of corporations to increase profits by reducing labor costs…

  • Taking the Sham Out of Christmas

    This is not going to be one of those regularly heard messages about how Christmas has become so commercialized that the true meaning of Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ, is almost an afterthought. You know the saying, “Every day should be like Christmas?”  While that is taken by some to mean that we should…

  • An Open Letter to President-elect Trump And the American People

    For the next 4 years, you will be carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.  All the suffering, all the conflicts, all the madness will come before you in some form or other for your leadership decision as President.  People and nations will look to you to make the right decisions for our country and…