Author: ppadmin

On a 2011 trip up Alaska’s “inland passage,” I picked up one of those free, ad-filled tour guides for the region. There were brief profiles of several towns in that coastal region formally known as the Alexander Archipeligo. For the town of Sitka, the book noted the remnants of Russian influence, including Orthodox churches. The book summarizes the town's history as "a unique blend of Tlingit (a native Alaskan nation) culture, Russian imperialism and, ultimately, American expansionism." It's those dirty Ruskies who want empire. Us? We just expand. — Ken Sehested

In San Francisco, a billboard for an e-trading firm proclaimed, “Make love not war,” and then—down at the bottom—“Screw it, just make money." — Barbara Ehrenreich

On Aug. 28, 1963, Rabbi Joachin Prinz came to the microphone to address the March on Washington crowd just before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. “Bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem,” Prinz said. “The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” — David Wilkinson

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish. “We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.” Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal. The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was. — Brian Alexander

Why nations do the thing they do, writ small: Prophecy from Peanuts Charlie Brown comes in to find his sister Sally carrying her clothes into his room. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “Big Brother!” she responds. "I thought you went to camp.” “I only went over to the mall. I’m gone for thirty minutes, and you start moving your stuff into my room?!” “That’s my new philosophy,” Sally says. ‘If you see a room you like, move into it.’” — Charles Schultz

Texas governor and former GOP presidential candidate Perry endorses socialism? Speaking to reporters in September 2011 after touring wildfire-ravaged area west of Austin, Gov. Rick Perry expressed frustration that expected federal assistance was being slowed by red tape. Specifically mentioning bulldozers and other equipment in nearby Ft. Hood, Perry said, “When you’ve got lives that are in danger . . . I really don’t care who the asset belongs to. If it’s sitting in some yard somewhere and not helping be part of the solution, that’s a problem.” — USA Today

While the median pay for top corporate executives has quadrupled since the 1970s, the pay of non-supervisory workers has declined [in 2011] by more than 10 percent. — Robert Scheer

America never was America to me. — Langston Hughes

There is a hard law. . . . When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. — Alan Patton

To the chagrin of many friends, Will [Campbell] insisted that since “we’re all bastards but God loves us anyway,” there was grace even for racists. It is grace found, not in “acquittal by law” but “acquittal by resurrection,” that “takes us into a freedom where it would never occur to us to kill somebody.” — Bill Leonard