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An Act Of Optimism

My annual order of wildflower seeds arrived in the mail, and I’ve never been so eager to start something new — something beautiful and immune to the virus taking so much away. I love reading aloud the names of the flowers that, in theory, will thrive here in northeast Ohio. Purple and gray-headed coneflowers, and clasping ones, too. Scarlet flax and Shasta daisy. Purple prairie clover and black-eyed Susan. Ox-Eye sunflower and gayfeather. Prairie Aster, evening primrose and lavender hyssop. And cosmos, always cosmos, because they bloom into bountiful bouquets until the first ...

Fixing College Corruption

America’s colleges are rife with corruption. The financial squeeze resulting from COVID-19 offers opportunities for a bit of remediation. Let’s first let’s examine what might be the root of academic corruption, suggested by the title of a recent study, “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship.” The study was done by Areo, an opinion and analysis digital magazine. By the way, Areo is short for Areopagitica, a speech delivered by John Milton in defense of free speech. Authors Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian say that something has gone ...

Coronavirus Blame Game Goes On

Editor’s Note: Mark Shields is off this week. The following column is by Veronique De Rugy. The coronavirus did apparently originate in China. Now President Donald Trump wants to punish that country for its role in letting the virus spread to the United States. This is just another poor excuse to push the same protectionist policies he has always favored. It’s also a way for him to deflect responsibility for the failures of his own administration and the many agencies that intrude daily into our lives. Trump’s administration is reportedly exploring the exact details of potential ...

Pandemic Makes End-Of-Life Care Harder

I just lost a dear elderly friend to cancer. Home hospice workers kept him comfortable. He spent his final weeks watching spring unfold in the outdoor Eden he had nurtured for decades. He died peacefully at night with me present. My friend’s death had little to do with COVID-19. One can say that he was spared the trauma of getting hit by that deadly virus in the jaws of a pandemic. He wasn’t among the tragic thousands who died at home without medical attention. Nor did he pass away alone in a hospital that wouldn’t let loved ones in for fear of spreading the virus. His nurses ...

Coexistence With China Or Cold War II

Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. “There is a significant amount of evidence” that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week. Trump himself seemed to subscribe to the charge: “This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this... It ...

Trump Fights, And We All Lose

One of the chief selling points about Donald Trump in 2016, one that persuaded many initially dubious Republicans, was the argument that “he fights.” Some of us tried to counter that his battles nearly always concerned his own fragile ego, not the cause of conservatism, nor even the Republican Party, but these objections were swept aside. Since January, we have witnessed a vivid lesson in the limits of fighting. There were ample reasons before now to recoil from Trump’s style of combat. It is so consistently cruel, witless, below-the-belt and unhinged (e.g. his recent tweets ...