Category: Culture
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All Opinions Are NOT Created Equal
Everyone has an opinion. In America, we believe everyone has that right – to hold an opinion that’s uniquely theirs (no matter how goofy). It’s a wonderful thing! But just having an opinion doesn’t make that opinion correct. It’s entirely possible to hold an opinion completely formed by feelings with not an iota of fact…
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America’s Founders Would Find Contemporary American Christianity Shocking
While the majority of America’s founders were Christians, they weren’t Christian the way most Americans – and especially most American Christians – understand Christianity today. “The majority of the Founders were religious rationalists or Unitarians.” Unitarianism is “a liberal Christian theological movement known for its belief in the unitary nature of God, and for its…
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The Big Lie Is An Act Of War
Even if it wasn’t an actual “on the books” crime, what Donald Trump and the Republican Party are doing to America feels criminal and that the fact that there aren’t already laws making what’s happening illegal is because it’s so monstrous, no one imagined Americans of any stripe would be capable of doing such a…
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Maybe Being Wrong All The Time Means You Shouldn’t Be A TV Pundit
Personally, I blame it all on MSNBC. Every time they put a lying asshat like Hugh Hewitt on its air, they cultivate the culture of lying for profit. It’s hard enough to wrap one’s head around the same news network having a great talent like Nicolle Wallace on its air alongside a useless turd like…
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The Bondage Of Bad Ideas
What makes a character like Wylie Coyote so universally funny that he transcends time is that he epitomizes the bondage of bad ideas. Even before he sets out on his latest attempt to catch the Roadrunner (who, frankly, doesn’t look like much of a meal to begin with), the Coyote is doomed to fail. The…
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Prisoners Of The Box
TV must’ve seen us coming. There were people who thought – as TV first sparked into being – that TV could never replace radio. That was shortsighted to be kind. And it was said by people who’d been alive while movies were invented and then spread across the planet as the most successful way to…
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Antonin Scalia Ended Our Gun Debate: There Is No Right To Individual Gun Ownership
Antonin Scalia doesn’t often get credit for being the “Daddy Of Gun Control”, but, in spite of himself, he is. In writing for the 5-4 majority in Heller, Scalia argued that one didn’t have to be part of any militia in order to keep and bear arms. Individuals could “keep and bear arms” in accordance…
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America’s Gun Crisis Is Foundational But Fixable – Just Like Chicago’s John Hancock Tower
We tell ourselves this every day now: no other country has the gun problem America has. Gun violence happens here the way peace and quiet happen everywhere else. It’s the missing guns that make the difference. Part of why our gun problem feels intractable is because we make it that way. It doesn’t have to…
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There Simply Is No “It” That “Both Sides Do”
Even now – as Republicans alone stand in the way of stopping gun violence (yes, a few Democrats stand with them) – our news media insists that in order to solve this crisis, “both sides” have to come down off their high horses! That’s because “both sides do it” brand journalism insists that every argument…