It was an unhappy experience I had some years ago that got me into thinking about how people can have more than one personality, can have different values and rules in different parts of their lives.

The dramatic juncture in the world reminds one of the old saying: If Athens weeps, Sparta is not laughing. Athens, the great power of millennia ago, suffered at the hands of the Spartans but Sparta too was in grave peril. It is happening now to the great power of our era, the United States, …

"Politics abhors a vacuum," said the late John McCain, as have others. The coronavirus menace shows the truth of it. President Donald Trump's floundering response created a void into which New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was sucked.

Several months ago, before anyone imagined the current crisis, I read a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

A little less than two months ago, the U.S. State Department made a curious announcement that suggests President Trump's "America First" administration put "China First" at a critical moment during the burgeoning Wuhan pandemic.

Dick Kovacevich, former CEO of Wells Fargo bank, thinks most Americans should return to work in April, urging that we "gradually bring those people back and see what happens."

It is not cognitive dissonance – the impossibility of holding two or more contradictory beliefs simultaneously – to favor the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump while at the same time worrying about what the increasing national debt (nearin…

Yes. The world is in the midst of a pandemic of the COVID-19 virus. But in between all the political posturing and breathless, fear-inducing media coverage, can we all just take a deep, cleansing breath? In fact, take four or five.

It's easy to feel depressed and scared these days. News about the impact and death toll of the new coronavirus, COVID-19, is constant. Government responses have been chaotic, ranging from near-indifference to suddenly shutting down the economy, with politicians offering to pay for everything.

One of the more tiresome partisan polkas we’ve witnessed in the years of President Donald Trump is the herky-jerky one around White House briefings. First, journalists insist that avoiding daily briefings is a dangerously undemocratic practice. Then when there are suddenly daily briefings fo…

A few words on the quiet death of an Italian priest.

It's unnerving, and perhaps instructive, that the arrangements elites have been prescribing for dealing with what they call our most dangerous environmental threat – climate change, formerly known as global warming – are almost precisely the opposite of the arrangements deployed to deal with…

Milan is the V-8 engine of Italy's economy. Known as an industrial and financial powerhouse, Milan is also famous for its foul air. Now the city and its region, Lombardy, have become the epicenter of Europe's coronavirus pandemic. To stop the virus' spread, factories, offices, restaurants an…

The coronavirus epidemic that's crashing the U.S. economy, putting lives at risk and derailing our entire way of life should serve as a wake-up call that the U.S. government must stop being reliant on China and other foreign nations for prescription drugs, medical supplies or any supply chai…

There are some important similarities between our crisis over the pandemic and our crisis over the disruption of the earth’s climate.

This is a tale of two governments. Both were faced with a potential disaster – a new and deadly epidemic. Both made choices that the world will judge.

My, these aging men with their bright ideas.

As the coronavirus stops normal life, trapping more Americans in their homes, some have raised the specter of another health threat: loneliness. Before this crisis seized our anxieties, much discussion centered around the dangers of perceived social isolation and feeling cut off from others.

We live in strange times these days. Nearly every American's life has been upended by something we can't even see, a miniscule coronavirus that has proven most deadly to those who already have compromised immune systems due to age or existing illness.

A recent report by Chris Stewart has shed new light on some of the educational problems faced by black youth. The report is titled "The Secret Shame: How America's Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All." Stewart is a self-described liberal and CEO…

Societies gripped by cataclysmic wars, depressions or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to power and privilege.

Viruses do not carry passports.

We are facing one discrete problem in the mass of chaos surrounding this pandemic that we can and must address immediately – the security of November's election.

Not so long ago, as it first became evident that the coronavirus was going to deal a blow to the American economy, I thought: Wouldn’t it be ironic if Trump were to lose his re-election bid because people blamed him for an economic downturn that wasn’t his fault?

A favorite book I try never to be without is by the late Irish poet and priest John O’Donohue. It’s on my bedside table, on my Kindle and on the Kindle app on my phone.

If Bernie Sanders were amassing a nearly insurmountable lead in the delegate counts, I have little doubt that he would be saying to Joe Biden: “Democrats have spoken. Time to drop out and help the team.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and just about the only official in the Trump administration trusted to tell the truth about the coronavirus, said last Thursday: “The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now. ...…

As the saying goes, "Nothing is certain but death and taxes." I would add, "and anti-price gouging legislation in times of crisis." Yet price increases in the face of sudden shortages are an important impetus to restore supply and demand market conditions that are closer to normal.

Let's see a show of hands. Who, among readers of this column, has experienced some anxiety in their lives? Ahhh, as I suspected, there are lots of hands in the air. Everyone has had moments of stress, strain and fear to deal with. The trick is how you handle it.

Senator Bernie Sanders' call for socialism has resonated among many Americans, particularly young Americans. They've fallen prey to the idea of a paradise here on Earth where things are free and there's little want. But socialists never reveal what turns out to be their true agenda. Let's lo…

The issue of whether government in America can quarantine persons against their will, ostensibly for their own health and that of others with whom they may come in contact, requires a dual analysis – one of the powers of the federal government and the other of the powers of the states. For c…

What just happened? The Democratic presidential nomination race, which gave signs of lasting months, is now basically over.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hitched her star to Bernie Sanders – and vice versa. AOC brought a young, hip Latina vibe to the elderly Sanders’ rallies. Photogenic and enjoying a massive social media presence, she joined Bernie in the far left’s crusade to take over the Democratic Party.

In a famous passage, the ancient Greeks declared that “right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

"Let's blow it all up." That was the sentiment that animated any number of Republican primary voters in 2016. The "it" was (take your pick) the Republican Party, the "establishment," the country. There were many good reasons for voters to be dissatisfied with the state of things in 2016. The…

When is the last time someone told you to calm down, and it worked?

There’s an old song by The O’Jays that seems especially apropos to this moment. The refrain goes: “Those lies done caught up with you this time.”

Saturday night, I ordered takeout from my favorite Chinese place. I did this as a gesture of solidarity after hearing that people have been avoiding Chinese restaurants because of the coronavirus pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China.

Was being a woman Elizabeth Warren's problem? That's the wrong question. Here's a better question: Was playing the protector of all damsels from that infamous rake, Mike Bloomberg, her problem? It was one of them, for certain.

Sen. Bernie Sanders said: "I believe that health care is a right of all people." He's not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are "rights" to decent housing, dece…

When middle-aged and older people feel unsafe, they run to the familiar and reliable, even if it's deadly dull. Younger people who feel threatened are more likely to take risks in hopes of finding something better.

The strange little man currently on trial for a 2000 murder in Los Angles admits he has killed before. He is now charged with putting a 9-millimeter bullet into the head of his longtime friend, Susan Berman, a woman who authorities believe knew his deepest, darkest secrets.

We're traveling in a crowded subway car somewhere under Manhattan when, without warning, the car comes to an abrupt halt in a tunnel in between stations. The subway car is plunged into darkness, and our own growing anxiety, along with that of our fellow passengers, is almost palpable. After …

My sainted mother was a public school teacher until she married my father and immediately, as a married woman, was forced by local Massachusetts rules then in force to leave the classroom. (My own grade school teachers included Miss Galvin, Miss Harrington, Miss Donahue, Miss Keohane, Miss C…

I have been writing for years about the dangers to human freedom that come from government mass surveillance. The United States was born in a defiant reaction to government surveillance. In the decade preceding the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the villains were the Stamp Act a…

Last week, I sat on a stage in front of more than 200 women in Columbus, Ohio, and tried to answer a simple question.

Sweet relief. Super Tuesday was the worst setback for left-wing populism since Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party crashed and burned. But while the voters have handed Joe Biden another chance, it's important to recognize why they've had doubts.

 The race for the Democratic presidential nomination lately took an astonishing turn: within less than a week, former Vice President Joe Biden’s candidacy leaped from near-death to front-runner.

Here’s some advice for Democrats. It will run over 600 words, but I can give you the gist of it in two: Stop whining.