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Why College Admissions Aren’t Fair

From my Psychology Today blog

Too Much Giving Undermines Democracy

From my Psychology Today blog:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201602/there-is-such-thing-too-much-giving

Are Terrorist Really Muslim?

Every religion can be read as promoting peace or violence. This is my latest Psychology Today blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201512/violence-in-the-name-god

Do More Guns Make People Safer?

From my Psychology Today blog, which was a featured article yesterday:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201512/more-guns-safer-schools

How to Alleviate Stress When Visiting Your Doctor

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201512/four-questions-every-patient-needs-ask

Who Let the Genie Out of the Bottle: Why Trump leads the pack

Politics has entered a new era, something we’ve not witnessed since the McCarthy era more than a half-century ago. Just as McCarthyism fed on anxieties of the Cold War, the new brush with anti-democratic forces is fueled by fears of terrorism.

McCarthyism’s roots reached back to the Palmer Raids of the 1920s and the Red Scare following WWII, while today’s anti-intellectual assault on democratic…

My School District Is In Crisis: A Legacy of Racism

My school district is in trouble.

Newsday reported that “[t]he cafeteria at Westbury Middle School is so crowded that students avoid it. They try for space in guidance counselors’ offices or other rooms in the 91-year-old school. To accommodate everyone, lunch is often, and early, beginning at 10:30 a.m. Some of the school’s classrooms are in the basement, where a ladder leaning against a wall to…

The Paradox of Forgiveness

From my Psychology Today blog:

After the shooting deaths of nine parishioners during a church service in Charleston, some survivors and relatives of the victims expressed the Christian virtue of mercy: they forgave Dylann Roof, the murderer.

Were they right to forgive him? Or are there some actions that are beyond the pale of civilized behavior that are unworthy of forgiveness?

If ISIS…

How Long Will They Let Trump Go On?

Two items this week about Donald Trump make me wonder whether the candidate can sink any lower.

First, in an article in the NY Times about one of his golf courses and a plaque indicating a bloody river crossing during the Civil War, which historians claim never happened, Trump said, “This was a prime river crossing, and you happen to be in a civil war, I would say that people were shot—a lot of…

The GOP and Nazis

It’s time to tone down the rhetoric. The GOP is not a Nazi party. Several statements from presidential hopeful frontrunners do smack of anti-democratic sentiments; some are positively frightening.

But the Republican Party is not a fascist party. While extremists have taken ahold in ways not imaginable just a few years ago, one hopes that this is a temporary aberration and the party will return to…

What About Muslim Immigrants?

Is keeping out Muslim immigrants un-American? It depends upon how you read American history.

Here is one historical interpretation of what became the USA:

The Dutch didn’t want the English and the English didn’t want the Dutch.

Neither the Dutch nor the English wanted Native Americans.

Puritans didn’t want Quakers and Protestants didn’t want Catholics.

Whites didn’t want Africans but wouldn’t let…

Keeping Out Muslims American Style

From my Psychology Today blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201511/is-keeping-muslims-out-us-un-american

Do We Value French Lives More Than Others?

From my Psychology Today blog about the reaction to the bombings in Paris: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201511/we-are-all-france-not-syria-libya-or-sudan

Ben Carson is a SDA: What Do Seventh Day Adventists Believe?

This is from my book Religious Ethics: A Sourcebook, published in 2002. It is the view of a SDA pastor, who at the time had recently moved from Westbury to Brooklyn.

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST

SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS ADOPTED THEIR NAME IN 1861. It is an evangelical group founded in America in expectation of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

About 1 million Americans are SDA’s. This represents only…

Common Ground on Limiting Gun Violence

From my Psychology Today blog: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201510/how-gun-control-can-work

What Would I Say to the Pope If I Met Him?

My short piece from Saturday’s Newsday:

http://pages.cdn.pagesuite.com/7/0/7021e37b-6d17-433c-8703-d697cac58235/page.pdf