We Must All Be “Communitarian”

We Must All Be “Communitarian”

Recently, I was doing some spring cleaning and came across a newspaper article with a photograph of me in the now defunct Long Island Press from the 1970s. I was working at Creedmoor State Hospital, one of those state mental institutions in New York with a horrific...
The Benefit of Humanity

The Benefit of Humanity

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time When I was a young man, I had the good fortune of hanging out with James...
Remembering the Cave, Calling on Compassion

Remembering the Cave, Calling on Compassion

I recently read about a student once asking anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” Mead replied, “A healed femur,” which was about 15,000 years old. Turns out that the femur is the longest bone in the body and, if broken, takes...