Runaway government spending and household debt can combine to make the next crisis a truly toxic and difficult one to overcome. When that happens, we’ll wonder why we didn’t see it coming.

The heroism of regular people during Hurricane Harvey stood in stark contrast to the seemingly endless pre-Harvey news accounts of pitched battles over Civil War monuments.

If we allow nations to become obsessed with eliminating all things that make life less than perfect, a lot of wonderful things will escape our vision.

Maybe it’s a Western thing. Out here the distances still are wide and people still live mainly in suburban homes with yards. I’m more than a little skeptical about the predictions I’m reading.

What if, when that family began screaming for help off the Florida coast, the only people on the beach had been members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats on a beach excursion?

It’s not clear what level of evidence would be needed to convince those folks who can’t see a nation that exists beyond party loyalty.

It isn’t comforting to think that the same politicians who are trying to fix health care reform in Washington are the ones promising to turn their attention to the income tax soon.

Virtual reality is poised to be the next wave of media to wash over the land. It holds a lot of promise, and promises to make parenting a lot tougher.

Christians and other religious groups are being tortured and killed in many parts of the world, and the collective outrage in the United States to this clearly non-trivial reality isn’t enough to fill a stocking, or even a Starbucks cup.

The Grammys made domestic violence a focus. But until politicians, sports leagues and performers begin tackling the pornography behemoth head on, it’s hard to take this crusade seriously.

The 21st century is filled with political venom that courses through the arteries of cyberspace like poison. But to a modern observer, the mid-19th century feels like familiar and comfortable territory.