Guess how many countries have signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child? 195. Now guess which two countries have not ratified the convention? You might guess a low-income developing country, and you would be correct. Somalia has not ratified the convention. However, the “leader of the free world,” just…
In his 1776 manifesto, “Common Sense,” Thomas Paine established the national project of “securing freedom and property to all men, and above all things, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” For Paine, it was all but common sense that people are free, and thus, free to choose their beliefs. In…
Observing the United States in the 1830s, the French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his Democracy in America that “the position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in one.” Tocqueville was observing the exceptionality of American society, with its…
Social media is home to lots of horrendous things. Unfortunately the ageist forces of anti-youth hate often find supportive audiences online. Public shaming videos where parents bully their children and proudly brag about it online are depressingly common. Even more depressing are the millions of parents who pass it around as an example of “good…
Senator Al Franken has introduced the Location Privacy Protection Act (S. 1223), which would ban spyware that sneaks onto your cell phone and tells someone else your GPS location or other sensitive information. Such apps are being marketed to employers who want to spy on their employees, to people who want to spy on their…
As you’ll find out everywhere, today is Mother’s Day. Over the years, I’ve made it no secret that I personally dislike Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, that they seem to be based on blind parental reverence and appreciation, often painting them as without exception selfless saints serving their unappreciative children. And any suggestion that such…
So, by now, we’ve all heard about that horrible man who made a video shooting his daughter’s laptop because… he was upset over something she said about him on Facebook. Something he only even knew about because he hacked into her account somehow, apparently. Perhaps even more disturbing than the idea this even happened is…
Last Christmas, I got my mother a digital camera. She was so excited! A few days earlier, I’d gone to Best Buy, picked one out, paid for it, went home, wrapped it, and placed it under the tree Christmas morning. So when one looks at who paid, you might say the camera belongs to me,…
Recently, comedian Tracy Morgan has been receiving a lot of attention for a homophobic rant that took place during a live performance in Nashville, Tennessee. During this rant, audience members claim that Morgan stated that if he found out his son was gay he would stab him to death. Since this incident, a variety of…
