Monthly Archive: January 2009
On the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) you can read, listen to or watch President Obama’s inaugural address. In the slug to the post, it says, “President Obama delivered his Inaugural Address, calling for a new era of responsibility.” (Click here to listen to the excerpt.) I’m a big believer in personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is the ultimate expression of freedom. In the 18th century, when large numbers of ordinary citizens were first given freehold tenure...
As we speak this morning (Fri, Jan 16, 2008, 7:53 a.m.), in just 4,987 minutes we will have a new president. And not just any new president. As we have been reminded almost constantly since late in the evening of Nov. 4, we will have the first African-American president. It is a signal moment in American history. On Nov. 6, just after the election, I spoke in this space on one very significant aspect of...
Miss Campbell was a sweet old lady. She was among the last of a large cohort of American women. The Miss Campbells of the mid-20th century had three things in common. They never married. They unapologetically retained the title ‘Miss’. And they taught school. These women once constituted a sizable plurality of American school teachers. By the late 1960s, they were nearing the end of their careers and were being replaced by younger, married, fertile...
