Author: Lance Garrison
Spinoza was convinced that all people, regardless of their religious or cultural background, were imbued with the capacity to reason and that we should seek the truth about ourselves and the world we live in. He insisted that our rational faculties could provide us with not only more precise knowledge, but with a path toward a happier life and better politics. In an essay called “On the Correction of the Understanding,” he wrote: “True philosophy is the discovery of the ‘true good’, and without knowledge of the true good human happiness is impossible.” That true good, in Spinoza’s view, can…
“Dearborn doesn’t sleep,” I recently told an out-of-state visitor to my hometown.It was a reference to the celebratory time of Ramadan, when our city breaks bread together for iftar at sunset and suhoor, before sunrise, each day. For a month, Dearborn is bustling around the clock: Business districts buzz during the day, and residents and visitors flock to break the fast together every night, gathering over hot, heaping plates filled with some of the best food in the country, surrounded by neighbors of all backgrounds.I have always spoken these words with warmth and pride for my community, but after 130…
With Judge Juan Merchan’s proclamation last week that jury selection in the Manhattan prosecution of Donald Trump will begin on March 25, it is time for a reappraisal of the case. The charges brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, have been overshadowed by the three other criminal prosecutions of Mr. Trump, but the 34 felony counts constitute a strong case of election interference and fraud in the place where Mr. Trump lived and conducted business for decades.Mr. Bragg will face tough challenges ahead, fueled by lingering skepticism that critics have harbored about the strength of the evidence and…
It’s 2007, a warm, sunny spring day in Moscow. It’s my first rally, and I’m nervous. I’m 16, silly and shy, falling in love with courageous and loud people around me. I hear my quiet voice join others screaming, “Russia without Putin.” We lock our arms and together push the police out of the street. Russia could be free: It’s a new feeling for me. This is where I see Aleksei Navalny for the first time.For the next 17 years, I watched my friend Aleksei rise from a Moscow blogger to a global moral and political figure, giving hope and…
Last week, Tom Suozzi won handily in the special election in New York’s Third Congressional District to fill the seat vacated by serial fraudster George Santos — reclaiming the seat that Suozzi previously held. This was the latest in a series of Democratic victories in special elections, victories that seem on their face to run counter to polls showing Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in the presidential race.As Nate Cohn, the Times’s lead polling analyst, has been at pains to point out, there isn’t necessarily a contradiction here. Those who vote in special elections aren’t representative of those who will…
To the Editor:Re “They Were My Friends for Years. Trump Tore Us Apart,” by Art Cullen (Opinion guest essay, Feb. 8):I must thank Art Cullen for his beautifully rendered piece that speaks to one of the tragedies in the wake of the Trump presidency. This loss of friendship is a divide that is often forgotten in the wider lens of politics, reducing the Trump effect into red and blue states, Republicans and Democrats.Mr. Cullen reminds us that the ugly impact of the Trump years is more granular, chipping away at even lifelong friendships before making the cracks too wide to…
On Jan. 8, 2020, as I was parking my car, I got a long-awaited phone call from one of my son’s doctors. She informed me that our 7-month-old son, Eliot, had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal neuromuscular disease.I can still remember the way the Los Angeles winter sunlight hit the dashboard. I can see my neighbor walking up her steps with groceries, a leaf falling, oblivious to the devastation below. “Life changes in an instant,” Joan Didion wrote. “The ordinary instant.” Our son had a fatal illness. He would die before us.D.M.D. prevents the production of dystrophin, a protein needed…
One of the most surprising aspects of this movement toward part-time work is how few white-collar people — including economists and policy analysts — have seemed to notice or appreciate it. So entrenched is the assumption that full-time work is on offer for most people who want it that even some Bureau of Labor Statistics data calculate annual earnings in various sectors by taking the hourly wage reported by participating employers and multiplying it by 2,080, the number of hours you’d work if you worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Never mind that in the real world…
Earlier this month, the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company announced its intention to build the South’s largest gas pipeline in more than a decade. The Southeast Supply Enhancement project, as the company calls it, would run from Virginia down through the Carolinas and Georgia before swinging west to Alabama, right through the heart of the American South.This was not astonishing news to anyone whose light bill comes from a Southern utility.A renewable energy revolution is unfolding across the globe faster than anyone dared to hope, but Southern officials, many of whom cut their political teeth on coal, have been cussedly…
Gail: Thanks. I know you’re not into sports, but this year’s Super Bowl was a really good game. And it’s always nice to see a city’s residents — all ages, races and even political parties — get together for such a happy community event.Bret: Don’t tell anyone, but I watched it. Incredible game.Gail: And then — gunfire. One innocent woman killed and more than 20 people wounded, including 11 children. In a state where, with few exceptions, 19-year-olds can carry concealed weapons without a permit.You can follow all my thoughts from there.Bret: The mind-set that allows this is illogical, incomprehensible,…