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

  • Bring Sanity and Social Purpose to the Lottery

    Lotteries were begun to meet the funding needs of state governments, mainly in the area of education.  That narrow focus, meeting state funding needs, continues to be the objective. It is past time to broaden the focus to one that includes improving the financial wherewithal of as many people as possible, thus providing a greater boost…

  • How to Improve Our Lives on a Deep Level

    With the current president in office and the dysfunctional political climate in the country, it would be easy to focus on nothing but our current problems and how to move the country back to a state of sanity and rationality. While that is of utmost importance and so must consume much of our time and…

  • What Are We Celebrating on July 4th?

    July 4th … Independence Day … is fraught with symbolism. It’s the beginning of American exceptionalism, the beginning of America taking its place on the world’s stage, the beginning of freedom and prosperity for Americans. There is no question that 1776 marked the beginning of America’s feeling that it was exceptional and that its moral…

  • The Concept of the “Working Poor” Should Be Unacceptable

    First what does it mean to be poor? It turns out that’s not as simple to answer as one might think. Doing research I found that “poor” means different things to different people. Some definitions seem to be rooted in the old institution of the poorhouse, which was a home for paupers. Poorhouses continued to…

  • The Shame of Religion: An Open Letter to All Christian-Islamic-Jewish Religious Leaders

    Most of the major conflicts in the world over the last 1500 years have either been a result of religious intolerance or were supported by religious authority.  This makes it the #1 cause or abetter of death and misery at the hands of man.  Religion has also been central to the neurotic suffering of man, his lack…

  • Have We Gone Mad? – The Full Scope of the Mass Shooting Epidemic

    In The New York Times, May 19, there was a graphic showing how many mass shootings there have been each month since January 2013.  They defined mass shooting as a single event in which 4 or more people are injured or killed. I was shocked.  The lowest number of mass shootings in a month was 11; the highest…

  • The Menace of Airbnb and How To Control It

    As I’ve traveled this past year, spending time in a variety of places, I’ve discovered that Airbnb is having a very harmful impact on both the availability and affordability of housing stock in both cities and small towns.   Yearly rents are going up because there are fewer apartments or houses available to rent, as owners…

  • Scientists Were Asleep at the Wheel

    During the ongoing debate about the nature of climate change, I had assumed, as I’m sure most others have, that the revelation both regarding the extent of climate change and the cause of that change being greenhouse gases was relatively recent.  I certainly never remember the subject being raised before the 90s. I was shocked therefore…

  • One Race, Many Cultures

    There is much societal strife in this world, and the reason comes down to one of two things:  either a country or group has something we want or wants something we have, or we feel threatened by the otherness of the other, that we cannot be safe while the other has potential power over us. I…

  • The Dysfunction of the Gun Control Debate

    A few days ago, a father of one of the children killed in the Parkland school shooting voiced his emotion and rage at President Trump, but then said that he didn’t favor gun restrictions; instead he wanted the school to be made a safe place.  He said the battle over gun restrictions was for another time.…