Conscience Versus Power

In spite of all the terrible executions, the indescribable tragedies, and the unrepented brutalities, the White Rose leaflets made their way throughout Germany and occupied Europe, bringing hope into the cells of condemned prisoners and…

Today’s One-Liner (#206)

Over the years they had learned to dissemble, learned how to look cool and distant, how to keep their faces inscrutable, their eyes blank, how to submit to security checks without trembling.  –Annette Dumbach and…

Living the Beatitudes

Even when they call us mad,When they call us subversives and communistsAnd all the epithets they put on us,We know that we only preach The subversive witness of the Beatitudes,Which have turned everything upside downTo proclaim…

“What’s Wrong with the World?”

Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not the newspaper, of…

Sensibility and Sense

 “This is the most sensible man that I ever saw in my life.”—Mrs. Porter, on Dr. Johnson, quoted in W. Jackson Bate, Samuel Johnson I live with the most sensible person I’ve ever seen in…

An Honest Man: Smedley Butler

Marine General Smedley Butler, in a 1933 speech: “I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in…

How It Was

Michele Turner has collected personal testimonies by the East Timorese about their recent history of suffering and resistance.  Telling East Timor reminds me of Mev’s book of interviews with Brazilians, in that these, too, are…

“I Remember” by Loran Aladdin

Loran wrote the following for my Humanities 101 class at Maryville University this past spring semester. _______________________ I remember a lifetime of feeling as though I should refrain from being proud of my identity. I…