Category: None
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The Ideal City
In the early 2000’s, I attended a guided tour of the city of Berlin in Germany. It had only been a little more than a decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the remnants of East Berlin then were still vivid. Our tour guide showed us the Eastern walls, which were still littered…
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Small Talks
Until we have walked in others’ shoes, we’ll never know what they’ve been through. All things considered, it is not fair for us to hope for others to see with our eyes. Even more so, those leading interesting lives should not expect those who’ve seen less to possess their nature, their sensibility, or their temperament.…
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The Empire
The concept of empire has been considered since ancient times. The Roman historians Livy and Tacitus argued the empire formed not on the basis of force, but the capacity to present force as being in the service of right and peace. The empire was not born of its own will, but rather called into being…
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Freedom, The State, The Nation
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argued that the sovereign derived his legitimacy from an unwritten social contract by which the individual forfeited their natural liberty in order to secure their natural right to life, which would otherwise be threatened by the “war of every man against every man.” Human beings were willing to concede their freedom…
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Accountability & The State
If we are to believe that democracy is the best government system known to men, then we should attempt to prove our premise. It is possible to do so with data provided by international institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and research organizations such as the Pew Research Center. To study the…
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The State
To live and breathe in a democracy today is to believe that it is the best government system known to men. Democracy’s history has been traced all the way back to ancient Greece. Philosophers such as Hegel and Nietzsche saw it as a secularized version of the Christian doctrine of universal equality of human dignity,…
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Higher Education
There was a time when I considered myself a professional student. I graduated college with 30% more courses than required, and all I had to show for it was not another bachelor degree, but a couple of minors. After that, I spent another 4 years obtaining not a PhD, but a couple of masters degrees. …
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Quality, Quantity
As parents, we love and want the best for our children. Depending on our cultural upbringing, our surroundings, and who we are, the love for our kids is manifested in different ways. And in this modern age that brings a plethora of offerings, the choices of what to provide for them can be overwhelming. Some…
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The Creative Kid
One way to gauge creativity is the assessment of divergent thinking – the ability to come up with many responses to a question, to be contrasted with convergent thinking – the ability to come up with the correct answer to a problem. For example, to answer the question “how many uses can you think of…
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Kid Lit
There is an on-going public debate over what is appropriate for kids – what they are not allowed to read. That more than 4,000 unique titles were challenged in public libraries and school libraries in 2023 demonstrates the book ban movement’s reach of intensity. When we look at the books being challenged, it is evident…
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