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In 1936 & ’37, workers sat down in Chevrolet plants in Flint, Michigan, and fought to stay there for 44 days, until they won the right to have their union bargain for them.60 Soon after that union victory, a wave of sit-downs swept the country and union rolls swelled. The next year, Congress set the […]

While President Reagan has many highways, buildings and the Washington National Airport named after him, President George W. Bush has so far had only a try at naming a sewage plant after him — to symbolize cleaning up the mess he left.40 Yet many of the catastrophes of Bush flowed from the policies and tactics […]

In the 1990’s right-wing talk spread to nearly every radio dial in the United States, and, day-after-day, pelted liberal-thinking citizens with scorn, and railed against use of government to help the people — even knocking long-established programs such as the minimum wage and social security.x70×71×72 Behind that barrage, a Republican majority rode into Congress, and […]

(Analysis.) Why should an American want to be a citizen of the great United States, instead of just a member of one’s own little tribe? What is the purpose of the United States? The preamble to the U.S. Constitution answers that question: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more […]

In their latter years, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), and some of his fellow famous authors, each showed, I think, something of his outlook on life with a little story or a quip. For instance, Vonnegut told about an uncle who often asked a certain rhetorical question: One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings […]