21st Century Citizenship, June 2020: Healing
When the 1918 pandemic, the Great Depression, and the 1960s combine, we're in need of intensive care: healing must come first, before we can recover...
10 July, 2020
21st Century Citizenship, May 2020: Regression
Regression can be a good thing. In software and statistics it's used to find mistakes; in politics, it's being used to make them...
15 June, 2020
21st Century Citizenship, April 2020: Pandemic
It's too much to expect, but it's not too much to ask -- Joe Diffie, 1958-2020 Pray for us all. Especially those in ICUs, all alone. And those trying to save them...
15 June, 2020
21st Century Citizenship, March 2020: Recovery
It may seem like we are in a long national nightmare from which we will never awaken. But that need not be, if we citizens remember that America is the land of second chances, but not straight lines...
03 March, 2020
21st Century Citizenship, February 2020: India
Last year, we took our February fingertips to the United Kingdom; this year's travelogue landed us in India, the world's largest democracy, struggling with challenges that eerily mirror our own......
10 February, 2020
21st Century Citizenship, January 2020: Best Of
Out of the tumult of 2019 have emerged many inspiring stories and ideas, which we celebrate with our second annual "best of" edition, recognizing both the posts and stories you, our community, liked b...
04 January, 2020
21st Century Citizenship, December 2019: Teach/ing
The Latin root of education, educare, means to lead out. In a 'post-truth' world, teachers, the nation's curators and explainers of knowledge, are going to play an outsized role in holding our republ...
10 December, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, November 2019: Enough
When is enough enough? It's a question we must ask with respect to so many aspects of our lives in these times. In politics today, the query is with us daily, because impeachment is the Constitution's...
10 November, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, October 2019: Labor
Our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, once observed: "Capital is only the fruit of labor. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." How times have changed--a...
06 October, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, Sept 2019: Generations
Since his election, the current President and his administration have fractured American democracy and divided its citizenry, most painfully and personally along generational lines. The steps that cit...
03 September, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, August 2019: Democracy
"It's a republic, not a democracy" say the defenders of minority rule, sliding into authoritarianism. For the founders, and Noah Webster after them, there wasn't remotely as much daylight between t...
09 August, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, July 2019: Rules
It was an American, General Douglas MacArthur, who coined the phrase “rules are made to be broken.” Rule breaking and rule rewriting have been American traditions since the founding of the nation....
03 July, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, June 2019: Infrastructure
Infrastructure Week has become a running gag, but it's no laughing matter; our infrastructure is not only key to overcoming a surprising array of challenges we face, but may be our best chance to unit...
31 May, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, May 2019: Engagement
The bright side of our current political environment is that there has been a renewed focus on civic engagement. In this edition we highlight selected activities in this emerging era of 21st century ...
05 May, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, Apr 2019: Redistribution
Issues of opportunity, the common good, and government’s role in promoting each have been fundamental since the founding of the Republic. How they are addressed and who benefits has not always been ...
07 April, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, Mar 2019: Techtopia
The Greek root for "-topia" is "topos," which just means "place," as in "topography." As we map the future, whether technology will produce a utopia, a dystopia, or just what a techtopia is genericall...
03 March, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, Feb 2019: Britannica, Britannia
Great Britain didn't just colonize the US, she gave birth to our nation. We rebelled against her as youngsters, have grown close since, fought beside her, like family, many times. As we hit middle age...
06 February, 2019
21st Century Citizenship, Jan 2019: Best Of
It's customary for many publications to wrap up the year with "best of" lists of one kind or another. For each of our standard categories, we present the articles that you liked the best--people's cho...
31 December, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Dec 2018: Rebuilding
The November elections were like rains in California fire country, or calm blue skies in Florida after a monster tropical depression. When we survive a brush with death in a natural disaster, our ta...
05 December, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Nov 2018: Investment
People are saying' we can't tax (or spend) our way out of the challenges ahead of us. They're right. To take on problems that seem so much bigger than we are, we can't just eat the pie, we have to mak...
08 November, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Oct 2018: Mid-Terms
Never in our lifetimes has the famous aphorism of early 18th century Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, that 'politics is war by other means,' seemed so apt......
05 October, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Sept 2018: Misunderstandings
The 'post-truth' era of 'alternative facts' obscures a deeper reality. That in politics, as in life, it's not what we don't know that's getting us into trouble, it's what we're sure we know that just ...
09 September, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, July 2018: Less Is More
In our bodies, we have a word and a name for untrammeled growth: cancer. In the body politic, it seems ultimately to lead to dissolution as well......
05 August, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, June 2018: Arcs
In times like these, moral arcs become a source of comfort. Should they be? We trace these rainbows across the sky of history–individual, social, even biological......
06 July, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, May 2018: Building Bridges
As it becomes increasingly clear that all of us will have to be accountable for what our leaders will not, we head into a 21st century Freedom Summer that can have no end......
05 June, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Apr 2018: Hocus Focus
With all the chaos emanating out of Washington daily, it's hard to know where to turn–but some are managing to ignore the noise and keep their eyes on the prize......
05 May, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Mar 2018: And Children Led
The arc of justice seemed to quicken in its pace and pliability this month, in thrall to the high metabolism of the social media generation and their double-edged sword......
03 April, 2018
21st Century Citizenship, Feb 2018: Starting Young, Starting Old
Looking back on the past month, we're reminded that predicting how history will view events is like playing pool with the balls in constant motion......
01 March, 2018
21st Century Citizenship: Welcome
Announcing the Frank Islam Institute for 21st Century Citizenship, created to address an increasing civic engagement deficit and enhance the concept of citizenship for the challenges and opportunities...
22 January, 2018