Category: Indiana Writers Group

Can you tell from the following three summaries which groups of Americans are being described? Two million of them flooded into this country in the space of a few years. Followers of “an alien religion,” they were also poor and uneducated, and it was feared they would both strain welfare systems and take over all…

THE PHRASE “Going to Hell in a hand basket” dates to the Gold Rush. It refers to men being hand-lowered in baskets down mining shafts to set dynamite. That’s what it feels like these days, and some of us have had enough. We’ve read the analyses of how America is failing. We all see the signs. The question is what we’re…

by Mark Franke Yogi Berra, whom I consider the 20th century’s pithiest philosopher, once reputedly said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Unfortunately much of what Yogi is credited with saying he never actually said, at least if you believe what Yogi himself claims in the several books published about those very quotes.  He’s too modest. If…

by Leo Morris On the one hand, the little kerfuffle at Fort Wayne’s Northrop High School is too trifling to make a big deal of. But on the other, it invites discussion because it is such a welcome sign of normality in a time when all traditional values are under constant assault. And by “normality,”…

Using Statistics to Stop (or Start) a Crime Epidemic CITING STATISTICS showing that blacks make up 14 percent of her state’s population but 53 percent of prisoners. and that blacks make up 80 percent of those incarcerated on a felony firearm charge, a Michigan prosecutor says she will no longer act on felony firearms charges. That is fair warning…

by Mark Franke I recall, just barely, reading James Burnham’s “Suicide of the West” back in my undergraduate days. While not being able to recall most of his arguments, I believe his point was that we are doing this to ourselves. He blamed liberalism, in its modern and not classical definition, for an erosion of…

by Richard J. McGowan, Ph.D. Plato’s dialogue, “Meno,” begins abruptly. Meno asks Socrates, “Can ethics be taught?” I followed Plato’s approach. On the first day of class, I asked my students, “Can ethics be taught?” They wrote that “Ethics and moral standards depend on the individual and their upbringing,” “Morals are not absolute in that they…

by Leo Morris On CBS-TV’s Sunday Morning this week, a former Army sergeant who left parts of both arms and legs in Afghanistan came on and tried to say something positive in the face of our ugly retreat from that country. He talked about being “angry, hurt, depressed and hopeless” after his injuries but finding solace in…

THE GOVERNOR, following form, has created a new state health commission with former state senator Luke Kenley as its chairman. Because that’s what we need right now, isn’t it? Another layer of bureaucracy, this one wielding gubernatorial power over what medicine we can have and when we can have it. Its mandate is unlimited, according to a commission…

by Mark Franke I am blessed in having many exceptionally intelligent friends, several of whom deserve the adjective brilliant. Most have doctorates in something and I don’t hesitate to query them on every occasion which presents itself. One such friend is a semi-retired theology professor. Every time I listen to him, I feel like my…